Convent of the Sisters of Zion

[2] In the second century, Roman Emperor Hadrian added arched vaulting to enable pavement to be placed over the pool, making it a large cuboid cistern to gather rainwater from guttering on the forum buildings.

On the surface, Hadrian built a triple-arched gateway[3] as an entrance to the eastern forum of the Aelia Capitolina in Jerusalem.

By 1857, Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, a French Jew and former atheist who converted to Catholicism and became a priest, decided to purchase the site and start a convent.

[7] Between 1858 and 1862, he built a basilica (the Church of Ecce Homo), which overlaps part of the gateway arch.

[citation needed] Due in part to an etching of a game by Roman soldiers discovered in 1864 involving the execution of a "mock king", the flagstones were thought by nuns to be those of Gabbatha, which John 19:13 describes as the location where Pontius Pilate adjudged Jesus' trial.