Holy Land Experience
— a small reconstructed Jerusalem that closed its gates in 2020.
Not only on a wall.
“A Christian theme park that stood for nineteen years on Conroy Road off Interstate 4 in Orlando. Stucco walls and an olive-grove courtyard reconstructed a quiet idea of first-century Jerusalem, with a Garden Tomb, the Temple courts, and a small Via Dolorosa. The Trinity Broadcasting Network ran it from 2007 until the pandemic forced it closed in 2020. AdventHealth bought the property the following year.
Holy Land Experience, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Holy Land Experience sat on a fifteen-acre parcel at the intersection of Conroy Road and Vineland Road in Orlando, Florida, about fifteen minutes by car from Walt Disney World. The park opened to the public on 5 February 2001 under the direction of Marvin Rosenthal, a Baptist minister and founder of the Zion's Hope ministry. Stucco-walled buildings, palm trees, and a small artificial wadi reconstructed an evocation of first-century Jerusalem in central Florida, a teaching landscape rather than a strict archaeological replica.
For most of its life the park ran on a seasonal calendar of Passion plays and pageants, peaking each spring during Holy Week. The Trinity Broadcasting Network acquired the property in 2007 and added a two-thousand-seat Church of All Nations auditorium and a Scriptorium gallery of rare biblical manuscripts. The pandemic closed the gates in March 2020; TBN announced the closure as permanent in 2021. AdventHealth purchased the property later that year, and the grounds are being redeveloped as a medical campus.
While open, the park welcomed roughly a quarter of a million visitors a year. Guests crossed an outer courtyard styled after Jerusalem's western wall, entered a small Temple precinct, and could walk the Garden Tomb path during the spring. The Scriptorium held one of the largest private collections of biblical manuscripts in the United States; much of the material was transferred to the Museum of the Bible in Washington after closure. The gates are closed to the public, and the buildings sit awaiting demolition or adaptive reuse.