For many, the little town of Bethlehem evokes a Technicolor Christmas image of a dainty village with baby Jesus in a manger, his glowing parents and wise men bearing gifts. But visitors experience a very different Bethlehem—one crippled with poverty, suicide bombers and menacing military division, and divided by a giant security wall. As Michael Finkel writes in a fascinating article in this month’s National Geographic, Bethlehem is one of the most contentious places on earth.

For decades, Israelis and Palestinians have been waging a bloody battle for control of the city, but one place of relative piece is the Church of the Nativity. It was built in 326 A.D., destroyed 200 years later, and rebuilt in the mid-sixth century. “In the rural areas of Bethlehem, today as it was 2,000 years ago, grottoes are used as livestock pens,” Finkel writes. “Mangers are carved out of rock. Here, in the bull’s-eye of this volatile place, ringed by Jewish settlements, imprisoned within a wall, encircled by refugee camps, hidden amid a forest of minarets, tucked below the floor of an ancient church, is a silver star. This, it’s believed, is where Jesus was born.”

The cave beneath the church is scented with incense and candle wax and lit by a string of bare bulbs. Finkel describes sobbing and fainting pilgrims and a dark and musty scent that is “the smell of history.”

“It’s easy to think of Bethlehem as the center of the world,” the city’s mayor, Victor Batarseh, told Finkel. “This can’t be a place where calm never exists. If the world is ever going to have peace, it has to start right here.”

Be sure to check out the accompanying audio slide show and photo gallery by Christopher Anderson.

Photo by nagillum via Flickr, (Creative Commons).