Garden of Gethsemane

Gethsemane is an urban garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. In Christianity, it is the place where Jesus underwent the agony in the garden and was arrested the night before his crucifixion.

According to the New Testament it was a place that Jesus and his disciples customarily visited, which allowed Judas to find him on the night of his arrest.

A study conducted by the National Research Council of Italy in 2012 found that several olive trees in the garden are amongst the oldest known to science.[11] Dates of 1092, 1166 and 1198 AD were obtained by carbon dating from older parts of the trunks of three trees. DNA tests show that the trees were originally planted from the same parent plant. This could indicate an attempt to keep the lineage of an older species intact. Then again, the three trees tested could have been sprouts reviving from the older roots. "The results of tests on trees in the Garden of Gethsemane have not settled the question of whether the gnarled trees are the very same which sheltered Jesus because olive trees can grow back from roots after being cut down", researchers said.