The (Roman Catholic) Franciscan Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria was built in 1882 on the ruins of the Crusader church and monastery belonging to the Augustinians. The colonnade of the present atrium (designed in 1948 by Antonio Barluzzi) incorporates surviving elements of the medieval cloister.

Below Church is a complex of caves and rock-cut chambers, which contain a number of chapels. One of these is popularly identified as the room in which St. Jerome translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into the Latin Vulgate, starting in the year 384.

A short passage from one of the adjoining chambers leads into the Grotto of the Nativity, but the door giving access is usually locked.