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The cathedral of St. John the Baptist (now known as the cathedral of St. Jean-Marc) was begun around 1115. It was originally planned to be six bays long, but after it was damaged by an earthquake in 1170, only the eastern half was repaired. Although it was built in the Levant by Genoese merchants, as Robert Ousterhout has commented, it wouldn’t have “seemed out of place in southern France or northern Spain.”

The architecture of the church is impressive, and suggests that the lords of Gibelet, the Embriaci, were eager to show their prosperity and dominance in the city. Along with the church of St. John (now the Al-Umari Grand Mosque) in Beirut, this is one of the best surviving examples of early crusader ecclesiastical architecture in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Today, one of the most striking features of the church is its exterior baptistery, attached to the western end of the north side of the church. The form and decoration of the baptistery invite comparisons with buildings both in northern Europe and in the Arab world.

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CE. 1115
Virtual tour by Meg Bernstein
Photography by Emily C. Floyd