Beneath the high altar of St Peter's Basilica lies a genuine 1st-century Roman necropolis, uncovered in excavations from 1940 to 1949. Directly under Bernini's baldacchino, archaeologists found a modest 2nd-century shrine, the Tropaion or Aedicula, built around AD 160 against a 'Red Wall' over an earlier grave that early Christians clearly venerated. That much is solid archaeology: a burial that Roman-era Christians treated as Peter's, marked by a monument the ancient writer Gaius may already have described around AD 200. In 1968 Pope Paul VI announced that bones recovered from a niche in the adjacent 'graffiti wall' had been identified as Peter's, following study by Margherita Guarducci. But that identification rests on disputed reconstruction and cannot be scientifically proven. What is documented is the necropolis and the early shrine over a venerated grave; the specific bones remain an act of faith, not a demonstrated fact.
- Where it is
- Vatican City / Rome, Italy
- Scripture
- John 21:18-19 · Matthew 16:18 · 2 Peter 1:14