On the slope facing the village of Ein Kerem, on the western edge of Jerusalem, the Church of the Visitation marks the tradition of the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth and the canticle of the Magnificat. The Franciscan sanctuary is built on two levels: a lower church, sunk into the rock and organised around an ancient cistern, and an upper church whose walls are covered with large painted compositions devoted to the Virgin. A campanile and a mosaic façade dominate the valley; in the forecourt, a long wall carries the text of the Magnificat inscribed on ceramic panels in dozens of languages, a detail that has become one of the most photographed in the Holy Land. The design belongs to the twentieth-century Franciscan building campaign associated with the architect Antonio Barluzzi, who sought to give each Gospel site a distinct architectural character. The film reads the church from the terraced gardens and cypresses below to the painted vaults above, following pilgrims on the ascent, and situating the sanctuary within the wider landscape of Ein Kerem — springs, stone houses and monasteries clustered in a single narrow valley.
