Maria’s Well is said to lie at the place where, according to the Catholic tradition, Angel Gabriel called Maria, Mother of Jesus and announced that she was the Son of God – an event known as the Annunciation.
Below the Greek-Orthodox Church of the Annunciation in today’s Nazareth, the well was located above an underground source, which served for centuries as a local waterhole for the Arab villagers. The current structure has been renovated twice, in 1967 and once in 2000, and is a symbolic representation of the structure that was used earlier.
The earliest written presentation, which is a fountain or a well, which is the place of the Annunciation, comes from the Protoevangelium of James, a non-canonical gospel from the second century. The author writes:
“And she took the pitcher, and went to draw water; and, behold, a voice said,” Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed among women. ”
However, the Lukasevangelium does not mention the water-drawing in his account of the Annunciation. Similarly, the Koran records a spirit in the form of a man who visits a chaste Mary to inform her that the Lord has given her a son to bear without referring to the water drawing, but recording a water jet, her Feet, when she bore Jesus in the same place of the Koran: Sura 19: 16-25.4
The Catholic Church believes that the Annunciation took place less than 0.5 km away in the Basilica of the Annunciation, a modern building housing an older church from the 4th century.
This basil was built after a first small church built by Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine I, in the 4th century AD. It was erected on the site where it found the source of the Marienbrunnen and is also called Marienbrunnen. Today this source is located in the basement of the Annunciation Basilica. Excavations showed that it is fed by the same source that the well existed near the Orthodox Church, and probably at least since the 2nd century CE.