Rome: Apostles and Martyrs

12. St Peter's Tomb

Roma, Lazio

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Peter was buried in the circus's cemetery after his crucifixion. When construction of the first Basilica finished in 312, much of the area was leveled to provide a secure footing for the building. Excavations in the 1950's did not establish any certain location for St Peter's resting place, but by 1968, Pope Paul VI announced that bones and an inscribed stone indicated the precise location. According to the traditions of the time, St Peter was laid to rest in a Christian place, near where he had suffered. In St Peter's time, this was the cemetery alongside the Via Cornelia on the top of the Vaticanus Hill, or Vatican Hill. The saint's remains were left in their sarcophagus, undisturbed beneath the small oratorio that was constructed, until in 258 when a secret group of men entered the tomb in the dead of night and removed the bones of St Peter, St Paul, and other prominent saints and moved them to the safety of San Sebastian's Catacombs. Photo credit: FloridaFliss