The Monastery of St Hilarion, a fourth-century hermit who had studied under Anthony in Egypt, is among the oldest and certainly the most complex early Christian monasteries. Found at the archaeological site of Tell Umm el-’Amr, close to Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, the monastery had been on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List for many years. I had the privilege of being involved with this site for the past three years, with my last visit there in August 2023.
I was first sent to Gaza to evaluate a conservation project for the monastery that was undertaken by the ALIPH Foundation, and then last year I visited twice again as team leader of an international and Palestinian team tasked with preparing a conservation and management plan for a project financed by the French Agency for Development (AFD). The monastery was also given substantial funding by UNESCO, the French and British governments (through the British Council) and other agencies. As I had written in a previous article, Gaza is full of very important Christian sites from the first years of Christianity.
It has the second most important port after Caesarea (from where St Paul departed before his shipwreck, according to the Bible). The Roman port, also on the UNESCO World Heritage List, has been mainly destroyed as have so many other important heritage sites in Gaza. The building that had most impressed me, however, was the Omari Mosque, which was originally a Byzantine basilica.
When I visited the.