The pillar
42years on the column
A man on a column
Forty-two years on a pillar, two sermons a day, and emperors sending for his counsel. Then a church built around the stone he stood on.
Read Simeon's storyWhat you are standing in
12 monuments
The Pillar
The column Simeon lived on, once about eighteen metres high, now a worn block at the centre of the octagon.
- Original height
- About 18 m
- Height today
- About 2 m
The Octagon
The eight-sided court at the centre of the church, built around the column so that four basilicas could meet on it.
The Baptistery
An octagonal drum raised on a square base, standing on the processional road — among the finest Christian buildings in Syria.
The Via Sacra
The paved road that climbs from the village to the church, built so that a crowd could arrive in order.
The Byzantine Walls
The fortifications that turned a monastery into a stronghold — and gave the hill the name it still carries.
Around the site
The hill is not the whole story: the village the pilgrims slept in lies at its foot, and around it a limestone massif full of the Ancient Villages.
Deir Semaan
The village at the foot of the hill, where the pilgrims slept. Ancient Telanissos — and the half of the site most visitors drive past.
The Ancient Villages
Qalaat Semaan does not stand alone. It sits in a landscape of some forty abandoned settlements — the Dead Cities — inscribed together as World Heritage in 2011.
History
From an ascetic on a column, to the largest church in the world, to a fortress, to a ruin under protection.