This chapel commemorates the escape of the apostle, let down in a basket from a window in the ramparts (Acts 9:25). It was built on the foundations of a gate of the Mamlūk period, Bāb Kaysān, behind which lies the Jewish quarter.
The first to qualify Bāb Kaysān as Porta sancti Pauli was Matthew Paris in 1244 CE. It is probable that this medieval identification originated in the presence behind the gate of the Jewish quarter. Based on the account of the Acts of the Apostles, the Christian travelers would have identified the inhabitants of the neighborhood with the descendants of the community which had persecuted the apostle. This long Christian tradition led to the erection of the Saint Paul Gate as it stands today. This transformation was carried out in the early 1920s at the initiative of Eustache de Lorey, then director of the French Institute of Archeology and Muslim Art in Damascus. The work consisted of the construction of a new door integrating the old remains, which gives access to a Greek Catholic chapel dedicated in 1925 to Saint Paul.
Jacques Ghislain de Maussion de Favières. Damascus, Baghdad: Capitals and lands of the caliphs. Translation to English by Edward J. Banks. Librairie orientale (Dar el-Mashreq), Beirut, Lebanon. 1972
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