Nazareth is one of the essential destinations of Christian pilgrimage, and its religious centre is concentrated in a few dense streets. Beside the great Basilica of the Annunciation, in the same Franciscan enclosure, stands the church of Saint Joseph — smaller, quieter, and for many visitors the more moving of the two. Built in a sober Romanesque revival style, it is remarkable above all for what lies beneath it: a crypt containing rock-cut chambers, cisterns, silos and stepped basins, remains of the ancient village that occupied this hillside. Christian tradition has honoured these spaces for centuries as the workshop and home of Joseph the carpenter, and the veneration of the site is inseparable from the archaeology exposed within it. Together with the basilica, the church forms an ensemble in which biblical narrative, excavated village life and living worship are stacked within a few metres. Filmed in 4K, the programme works the contrast between the calm upper church and the raw stone of the crypt, and places both within a portrait of Nazareth, a city where the sacred and the everyday share the same streets.
