Tomb of St. Paul Now Visible
Uncovered at the Basilica of St. Paul’s in Rome
After three years of excavations under St. Paul's Outside the Walls (San Paolo fuori le Mura), visitors to Rome can now see at least a part of the tomb of St. Paul.
Archaeologists in Italy, excavating under the altar of Rome’s second largest church, have removed the two immense marble slabs that had covered the crypt under the church’s massive altar. These hid what they expected to find: the tomb of the martyred apostle, St. Paul.
The sarcophagus of St. Paul, only one end of which is uncovered and visible through a glass panel, was identified by the original Latin inscription on a marble slab above it: Paulo Apostolo Mart (Paul Apostle Martyr). Visible on the marble tomb are the holes through which early pilgrims pushed strips of cloth to touch the relic.
After the death of Christ, Paul traveled widely throughout the ancient world of Greece, Rome and Asia Minor and his letters to the early churches, recorded in the New Testament, made perhaps the most significant impact on early Christian thinking.
This basilica is the third dedicated to him here. The first was built under Constantine, replacing an oratory over the spot in her vineyard where the Roman matron Lucinda buried St. Paul. A larger basilica was built in 386 under Theodosius, enlarged by his son and embellished through the centuries. As late as the 8th century the approach to the basilica was covered by a magnificent portico that stretched for a mile from the Porta de San Paolo. In 1823 the church burned and instead of restoring it, the Vatican chose to build a new neoclassical church.
The replacement has little to recommend it on the outside; inside all that remains of the original church are the canopy above the altar, the restored Venetian mosaics on the arch and in the apse, the outsized paschal candlestick and the restored bronze doors made in Constantinople. The later Medieval cloister, undamaged by the fire, is Rome’s most beautiful, with columns of different design and stone.
With each rebuilding the tomb became deeper beneath the floor and without the technical skills that modern archaeologists have at their command, the architects who rebuilt it got only as far as an iron grating. Until now, visitors could only look down a hole toward the cement that covered the tomb of St. Paul.
San Paolo fuori le Mura is in the Testaccio district, near the Pyramid Gaius Cestius, on Via Ostiense. It can be reached via underground Line B.
