The Church of Saint George in Lod stands next to the fifteenth-century Great Mosque of Lod. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem received Ottoman permission to build it on medieval ruins, and the Munayer and Habash families donated money and resources. It was built from 1870 to 1872.
The site has a long history. A Byzantine church, probably a three-aisled basilica, stood here from the fifth to the seventh century, and the Sasanians destroyed it in 614. Crusaders built a cathedral on the same site in the twelfth century, matching the earlier dimensions of 154 by 79 feet (47 by 24 meters). Saladin ordered it demolished in 1191. After the Mamluk sultan Baibars took the town in 1266, the ruined western church was converted into a mosque, as an inscription of 1269 records.
A crypt holds a sarcophagus venerated as the symbolic tomb of St George, and Crusader apses survive at the east end.
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