The fields east of Bethlehem are still used by shepherds.
That is the first thing to understand about the Shepherds’ Fields. This is not a preserved ruin or a reconstructed scene. You drive 2 kilometers east from Manger Square into the town of Beit Sahour, whose Arabic name means “House of the Watchmen,” and the land opens into low terraced hills dotted with olive trees, grazing sheep, and the same kind of limestone caves shepherds used in the first century. Some of the caves are still in use. You can hear goats on the slopes.
Luke writes: “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified” (Luke 2:8-9). The angel says, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Then a multitude of the heavenly host joins the first angel, praising God. The shepherds go to Bethlehem, find the child, and become the first people outside the family to announce who he is.
These are also the fields where Ruth gleaned in Boaz’s field at the start of the harvest (Ruth 2:2-3), and where David kept his father’s sheep before Samuel called him home to be anointed king (1 Samuel 16:11). Same terraced ground, three different eras. By the late 4th century, the pilgrim Egeria mentions a church at the shepherds’ site in her travel diary, which puts continuous Christian pilgrimage here at more than 1,600 years.
Three Christian sites in Beit Sahour mark the memory of Luke 2 today: the Catholic (Franciscan), the Greek Orthodox, and the YMCA Shepherds’ Field, used mainly by Protestant and evangelical groups. They sit within a kilometer of each other in Area A of the Palestinian Authority, and most itineraries visit one or more of them on the same morning as the Church of the Nativity. To see how Bethlehem and the Shepherds’ Fields fit into a structured group pilgrimage, visit our Holy Land Pilgrimages page.
The Catholic site: the Chapel of the Angels
The Franciscan site sits on a gentle rise at the southern edge of Beit Sahour, inside a walled compound with olive trees, shepherd caves, and a small chapel at the center.
The chapel is the work of Antonio Barluzzi, the Italian architect who designed many of the 20th-century Franciscan churches across the Holy Land, including the Church of All Nations at Gethsemane and the Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives. Barluzzi built this one in 1953. It is small, polygonal, shaped like a nomad’s tent. The outer walls rise to a narrow dome with a bronze statue of an angel at the top.
Inside, the chapel holds fewer than fifty people. A ring of small windows pierces the top of the dome and drops narrow shafts of light onto the altar. The acoustics are unusual. The dome gathers sound and returns it softly, so a single voice reading Scripture carries without any strain, and a group singing a carol fills the space in a way a larger church never could. Three frescoes by Umberto Noni on the interior walls show the annunciation to the shepherds, their arrival at the manger, and their return to the fields. The windows are deep amber. Even at midday the light inside is the color of firelight.
Outside the chapel the compound opens onto fields and several natural caves. Two of the caves have been partially excavated and are traditionally identified as shelters where shepherds kept watch at night. You can step down into them. The floor is packed earth, the ceiling low, the interior cool even in July. Groups often read Luke 2:8-20 inside one of these caves, because the physical space matches the text in a way that flat recitation in a hotel conference room never will.
The Franciscan compound also has shaded picnic areas and outdoor seating where groups gather before or after their time in the chapel. During Christmas week the site is heavily booked with group Masses, and individual pilgrims may find the chapel reserved for hours at a time. On ordinary weekday mornings outside the Christmas season, the compound is often nearly empty.
The Greek Orthodox site: Deir er-Ras
A short walk or very brief drive away, on a separate hill on the eastern side of Beit Sahour, is the Greek Orthodox Shepherds’ Field, sometimes called Deir er-Ras or Kanisat er-Rawat (the Church of the Shepherds). This site predates the Franciscan compound by roughly 1,500 years.
At the center of the site is a cave used as a church since the 4th or 5th century. Archaeologists have found three superimposed church layers above the cave, the oldest a small Byzantine structure that later expanded into a monastery. Fragments of 5th-century mosaics survive on parts of the floor. The cave itself, reached down a narrow flight of stone steps, is lit by a few hanging oil lamps and the faint daylight that filters in from the entrance.
This is one of the oldest continuously venerated sites associated with the birth narrative outside the Church of the Nativity itself. The Greek Orthodox community maintains it with a small resident presence, and the current 20th-century church above the cave is used for services. The atmosphere is quieter than the Catholic compound. Groups tend to move through the cave in silence. If the resident priest is present and the group is small, he will sometimes light a candle for you and read a short blessing in Greek or Arabic.
The grounds around the Orthodox site are less landscaped than the Franciscan compound. There are fewer benches, less shade, and the views of the surrounding hills are more open. You can see Bethlehem on the ridge to the west and the beginning of the wilderness that slopes down toward the Dead Sea in the east. This is roughly the landscape Ruth gleaned in, the hills David shepherded across as a boy in Bethlehem, the fields the shepherds of Luke 2 walked at night.
The Protestant site: the YMCA Shepherds’ Field
Between the Catholic and Orthodox compounds sits a third site, managed by the YMCA of East Jerusalem and opened to pilgrimage groups of all denominations. Most Protestant and evangelical itineraries stop here rather than at the two ancient sites, because the grounds are designed for outdoor group worship: an open-air amphitheater seating about 200 on stone benches, a preaching rock overlooking the fields, and a small stone chapel used mainly on rainy days.
This is where groups gather with guitars or a cappella to sing “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” in the place the hymn is actually about. The chapel is plain compared to Barluzzi’s, and the history is thinner than at Deir er-Ras. What the site offers is what a lot of evangelical groups want: an open hillside with good acoustics, a direct view west to Bethlehem, and room to preach.
The YMCA site is about 400 meters from the Franciscan compound and 600 meters from the Orthodox site, close enough that Protestant groups with extra time sometimes visit two or all three.
How to choose between the sites
None of the three sites can be proven as the exact spot of the angels’ announcement. Luke does not give coordinates. What these places preserve is the landscape, and in the case of Deir er-Ras, the fact that Christians have been worshipping on the same ground since the Byzantine period.
Catholic groups concentrate on the Franciscan site, where Barluzzi’s chapel and the Custody of the Holy Land connection give the visit a liturgical home. Orthodox pilgrims spend more time at Deir er-Ras for obvious reasons: the fifth-century foundations and the living Greek Orthodox presence belong directly to their tradition. Protestants and evangelicals usually worship at the YMCA site, then walk over to the Franciscan compound to step inside Barluzzi’s chapel and the shepherd caves.
Whichever site you visit, get out of the chapel at some point and walk in the fields. Stand in the open, look west to Bethlehem on its ridge, and reread the passage. “When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about’” (Luke 2:15). The town they walked to is the town you can see from where you are standing. About 2 kilometers, measurable on any map.
Practical notes for visiting
The Shepherds’ Fields sit in Area A of the Palestinian Authority, which means Israeli citizens on Israeli plates cannot enter by law. Christian pilgrims on tourist visas go in freely. Most groups come with a Palestinian driver and a guide licensed for Area A, which is the standard setup for any Bethlehem day trip from Jerusalem.
All three sites are open daily, generally 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with the Catholic compound closing for about two hours at midday. Hours shift seasonally and on Christian feast days, so check with your guide. None of the sites charge an entrance fee, though donations are welcomed at all of them.
Dress code inside the chapels is the same as at any Holy Land church: shoulders and knees covered, for men and women. Scarves are available at the Catholic site for visitors who arrive unprepared. At the Orthodox cave, women are asked to cover their heads when entering the sanctuary if a service is underway, though this is not enforced for general visits.
Combine your visit with the Church of the Nativity and, if time allows, the Milk Grotto chapel back in central Bethlehem. A full day from a Jerusalem hotel, with the checkpoint crossing, two or three sites, and lunch in Beit Sahour or Bethlehem, runs about seven hours door to door.
Beit Sahour itself is worth more attention than most itineraries give it. The town is roughly 80 percent Palestinian Christian, one of the few in the region with that balance still intact, and the families in the neighborhoods around the shepherds’ sites have worshipped here for generations. If your group has an hour for lunch, the restaurants on the main street serve real home cooking: msakhan, maqluba, kebab, fresh laban. The people who greet you between the Catholic compound and the Orthodox site live in a town whose Arabic name means “the watchmen,” on the land where the original watchmen of Luke 2 saw what they saw.