St. Mark's Church

Near the St. Simon the Tanner Cathedral is another church called St. Mark's Church. This church is located within an enormous cave in the mountain. The cave was discovered in 1979 but had only one entrance and was difficult to pass through. In 1991, during the celebrations in Cairo for one of the Islamic festivals, during which it was common to celebrate with firecrackers, explosions were used to expand the entrance and space of the cave (timed conveniently with the firecrackers from the Islamic festival to disguise what was being done). The wall around the back of the church is covered with carvings. The first depicts the moving of Mokattam Mountain but the others depict biblical scenes.