The Galilee is the backdrop for most of the scenes in the Gospels.

If you’re based in the Lower Galilee or making a day trip from another region, here are some of the Christian sites you must see, and just a  few of the many other gems(*). We will divide the sites into day trips. Remember that in this case the itinerary is very ambitious. This means that we cover many sites without the ability to meander about at all of the sites.

One or Two day tour

The sites listed below will take you a very intense day or a more leisurely two days. When we begin to add in the off-the-beaten-track gems you easily reach a full two days of touring.

Nazareth, childhood home of Jesus, has several moving, historical sites with which we begin our tour. The Church of the Annunciation, highlight of this Franciscan compound, is the traditional site of the Angel Gabriel’s meeting with the Virgin Mary. Nearby, over an area said to be the place where the townsmen engaged in commercial activities stands the 20th century Church of St. Joseph.

About a ten minute walk north of the The Church of the Annunciation, we approach the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel. If time permits stop on the way to the church as the spice shop along the road. In the church a spring issues forth out of the rock. This spring was used until the 1960’s. Nearby is the so-called Mary’s Well, a symbolic representation of the ancient well.

Later, we will walk through the Old City market of Nazareth and see the Church-Synagogue of Nazareth, said to be built over the ancient synagogue from the time of Jesus. If time permits, wandering the streets of Old Nazareth is worth while.

Now it’s time to leave Nazareth and venture north. We ascend over the first of the Galilee ridges to the town of Cana, home of the first recorded miracle performed by Jesus in the Gospels. Here at a wedding, he changed water into wine. We will visit the Catholic Franciscan church here. There’s also a recently renovated Greek Orthodox church only a two minute walk away.

We continue north towards the major East-West highway in the Lower Galilee. At the junction we’ll turn east, towards the Sea of Galilee. A half hour later, we descend below Sea Level, the Sea of Galiless is revealed to us as we enter the Valley of Migdal with its farming community and lush orchards filled with Olive trees and Mangos. We make our first stop, the home town of Mary Magdalene, Magdala. Here, only recently, the Earth revealed the 1st century communal synagogue with a remarkable stone relief of a seven branched canelabra, a common decorative motif in Jewish history, recalling for the people the grandiose golden candelabra in Jerusalem’s Temple.

Just a five minute drive up the road from Magdala we enter the Kibbutz of Ginossar for a viewing of The Jesus Boat at Ginossar at the Visitors Center. Discovered when the Sea of Galilee was at a low level due to drought, the boat was gently lifted from the muck of the sea floor and today we can learn about the process and contemplate the boat’s meaning.

Just a five minute walk from the Visitor’s Center we have the chance to experience the Sea of Galilee itself on a Sea of Galilee Boad Ride. This will typically take 45 minutes to an hour and carry us up the shore along the so-called Christian corner of the lake where we can easily spot sites such as Tabgha, Mt. of Beatitudes and Capernium.

Returning to land and less than ten minutes away we arrive at two sites, separated by just a five minute walk, Tabgha’s Peters Primacy and Tabgha’s Miracle of the Multiplication of Fishes and Loaves Church. At the Church of the Miracle of the Multiplication we’ll visit a simple modern church, built over an ancient one, the site of the miracle alluded to in Matthew 14:14-22. Further on at Peter’s Primacy we walk down to the water’s edge and visit a church in which sits a stone upon which Jesus roasted the fish caught by Peter and the disciples as described in John 21:15-17.

After leaving the lake behind for now we ascend ten minutes to one of the most beautiful viewing points in Israel, the Mount of Beatitudes, a place to contemplate Jesus Sermon on the Mount in the many gardens set aside for prayer and contemplation by the Franciscan nuns who run the site.

After the Beatitudes we will descend once again to the lake side and visit the town where Jesus lived for three years during his Galilean ministry, Capernium. Capernium requires some time to contemplate and understand what was, revealed here by archeologists: the home of St. Peter and Jesus, and the ancient Jewish synagogue, as well as the remains of neighborhoods from those times.

We’ll now take one more ride, this time, this time all the way around the Sea of Galilee, traveling in a clockwise direction for about 40 minutes. Our path will take us across the Jordan River and over to the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee where we see the Golan Heights rise up above us. Eventually we will reach the Lower Jordan River where it flows out of the Sea of Galilee, and the baptism site at Yardenit. Baptism is a deeply personal event, bringing a Christian into the community of believers. While the Catholic theology states that baptism should only occur once in a person’s life, other streams of Christianity allow for more than one baptism.

We have now completed a day or two of touring Israel’s north and gained an intimate understanding of the land in which Jesus lived and ministered. We will return now to our lodgings in Tiberias, elsewhere in the Galilee, or in another region of Israel.