Following in Jesus’ Footsteps: Capernaum, the Town of Jesus

By Francesco Patton

The evangelist Matthew describes Jesus’ departure from the place where he had been raised to his new residence, “his town” (Mt 9:1), at the start of his public ministry in the following way: “Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali” (Mt 4:12-13).

Matthew Levi, who worked as a tax collector for the Roman occupiers on the road that led from Capernaum to Damascus, also provides the theological motivation behind Jesus’ change in residence: “so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned” (Mt 4:14-16).

Still today, pilgrims who visit Capernaum on the shores of Lake Tiberias can have the extraordinary experience of seeing the city where Jesus spent most of the three years of his ministry in Galilee. This is where he called his Apostles, where he preached, healed the sick and carried out the powerful signs that reveal his profound identity as Messiah and Son of God. Fr Stanislao Loffreda, Franciscan archaeologist of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (SBF) in Jerusalem dedicated his entire life to this site, and was Fr Virgilio Canio Corbo’s chief assistant in the 19 [excavation] campaigns carried out here between 1968 and 1986. In his guide on Capernaum, which is the main source of this article, he recalled the real objective of archaeology:

“We archaeologists exhume material remains from the past, but we are actually searching for something more. Our ultimate goal is, as far as possible, to establish contact with past generations, to speak with them and to allow them to speak to the current generations” (cf. S. Loffreda, Cafarnao, Jerusalem, 1995, p. 7). When we think of Capernaum as “the city of Jesus” and of the first Apostles, we immediately grasp the importance of its ancient remains for all humanity. For the friars of the Custody of the Holy Land, who are the guardians of this place, and live here as a praying and welcoming fraternity, Capernaum is much more than an archaeological site: it is the city of Jesus, the house of the Lord.

A village on the lakeshore

The archaeological site is located on the northwestern bank of Lake Tiberias (Kinneret), in Galilee, some 210 metres below sea level, 16 kilometres from Tiberias, three kilometres from Tabgha and five kilometres from where the River Jordan flows into the lake. The original Semitic name of the place is Kfar Nahum, that is, the village of Nahum (one of the so-called “minor prophets” also had this name). Origen translated it as “field of consolation” (from the Hebrew root nhm), while Saint Jerome used the term, “beautiful city” (from the root n’m). Flavius Josephus chose Capharnaoum, the closest translation to the Hebrew pronunciation (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., pp. 14-15).

The ruins of ancient Capernaum cover approximately seven hectares. Two-thirds of it belong to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. The remaining part on the eastern side belongs to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. The ancient village was abandoned about 1,000 years ago, although some Arab families from the Semekiyeh tribe remained there until the 1948 Arab Israeli war (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., p. 10).

In Jesus’ days, Capernaum was a frontier city equipped with a tax collection booth (cf. Mk 2:13-15), located on the imperial road that led to Damascus. The only town on the northwestern bank of the Lake, it was five kilometres away from Upper Jordan, which marked the boundary between the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas and the Golan that had been assigned to his brother Philip (both sons of Herod the Great). In 1975, a milestone bearing the name of Emperor Hadrian was found roughly 100 metres northwest from the synagogue, confirming that there had been an imperial road there (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., pp. 18-19).

The presence of a detachment of Roman soldiers, documented in the Gospels (cf. Lk 7:1-10; Mt 8:5-13), indicated the village’s importance as a place of transit. Capernaum had commercial relations with Upper Galilee, the Golan, Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Africa and the Phoenicians, as confirmed by recovered coins and ceramics. What Fr Loffreda found surprising was the lack of contact with central and southern Palestine (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., p. 19).

Jesus leaves Nazareth and goes to live in Capernaum

As we mentioned earlier, Jesus left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum. The decision was not by chance. Nazareth “was a mountainous district, cut off from the main roads of communication”, whereas Capernaum was located on a strategic road and “was distant enough from large urban centres, especially from Tiberias where Herod Antipas had established his capital”. Thus, Jesus could “spread his messianic message widely, without causing an immediate reaction from political and religious leaders”. Moreover, Capernaum had a diverse population: fishers, farmers, artisans, merchants, publicans. Its relations with the Romans were marked “by a unique cordiality, to the point that a Roman centurion had built the synagogue for the Jewish community” (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., pp. 68-69). Hence, it is no wonder that Jesus called his first disciples from this community: fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John, and publican Matthew.

The House of Peter: from domus-ecclesia to a memorial

The most significant discovery brought to light by the Franciscan excavations is the so-called insula sacra. Led by Fr Virgilio Corbo and Fr Stanislao Loffreda, the 1968 excavations have permitted a reconstruction of the history of this place, identifying four key phases. The history of the house in which Jesus lived “can be summed up in the following way:

1. The initial date is in the first century BC.

2. Starting from the end of the first century AD, part of the house […] was turned into a domus-ecclesia, that is, it was designated as a place for religious meetings.

3. In the fourth century the so-called domus-ecclesia was enlarged and separated from the rest of the village by an imposing surrounding wall.

4. In the second half of the fifth century, all the structures of the insula sacra were demolished and an octagonal-shaped church was built” (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., p. 51).

The fact that the room was a Christian place of worship is documented by graffiti bearing Jesus’ name and monogram, liturgical expressions such as Amen and Kyrie Eleison, and an inscription in Paleo-Estrangelo (a variant of ancient Syriac) that appears to refer to the Eucharist. “The variety of languages leads to the strong assumption that the domus-ecclesia was not used just by the local faithful, but also by pilgrims (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., p. 60).

In “De locis sanctis”, Peter the Deacon (1107-1140 AD) reports a testimony by the pilgrim Egeria (fourth century AD), who describes the domus-ecclesia in the following way:

“In Capernaum the house of the prince of the Apostles was transformed into a church. Its walls are still standing to this very day and here the Lord healed the paralytic. In this place there is also the synagogue in which the Lord cured the man possessed by the devil. This synagogue is built of square stones and there are many steps which bring to its entrance” (Petrus Diaconus, Liber de Locis Sanctis, in Itineraria et alia geographica, ed. R. Weber, CCL, 175, Turnhout 1965, pp. 98-99).

The octagonal church from the second half of the fifth century was designed with a central octagon above the house, indicating to pilgrims “the precise location of the house of Saint Peter, which by then had been buried below the Church’s podium” (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., p. 66). Towards the end of the fifth century AD, a baptismal font and an apse were added to its eastern side (cf. J. Patrich, Baptism in the Holy Land: 4th – 7th Centuries, Milan 2025, pp. 103-104). The modern memorial, by Italian architect Ildo Avetta, was consecrated on 29 June 1990. After his death in 1991, Fr Corbo, who had led the works, was buried beneath the memorial in honour of Saint Peter.

The synagogues: from the fourth century and from Jesus’ times

The other great monument in Capernaum is the “white” synagogue. Unlike private homes which were built using dark basalt stone, it was entirely constructed with blocks of white limestone, weighing up to four tonnes, that had been brought from quarries located several kilometres away. The synagogue’s decorative elements are highly refined and enriched with Jewish symbols.

Fr Geiger writes: “With regards to the synagogue at the time of Jesus, until the early 20th century, pioneering archaeologists were largely convinced that they had found it. However, when German archaeologists Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger analyzed the ruins between 1905–1916, they dated them back to 200 AD. Since the ruins could not have been of the synagogue that existed during Jesus’ days, between 1968 and 1990, Franciscans made an effort to verify with all due caution, whether there was an older synagogue below the one that was visible. An initial surprise was the finding of more than 30,000 (!) coins on the pavement of the synagogue of the time, that dated back to the end of the fourth century AD (383-395)” (H. Fürst – G. Geiger, Terra Santa. Guida francescana per pellegrini e viaggiatori, Milano 2018², pp. 220-221/1021).

Based on analyses of the late Roman period coins and ceramics found on various levels of the site, Corbo and Loffreda’s excavations made it possible to date the synagogue to the late fourth century. Moreover, archaeologists found a basalt pavement dating back to the first century below the white synagogue, which was part of a public building whose size was such that it could not have been a private home. Corbo and Loffreda acknowledged that “the large pavement from the first century discovered below the central nave of the white synagogue, could be part of the synagogue that had long been sought, that is, the one built by the Roman centurion and visited by Jesus” (S. Loffreda, op. cit., pp. 32-49). It was in this very synagogue that Jesus taught with authority on the Sabbath, cast away evil spirits (cf. Mk 1:21-28) and delivered his discourse on the bread of life (cf. Jn 6:22-71).

The coexistence of a Christian and Jewish community

Findings confirm that a majority Christian community and a minority Jewish community lived side by side in the Byzantine village (fourth to seventh century AD). Ceramic fragments marked with crosses were found in abundance almost everywhere on the Franciscan part of the site and items such as a pendant depicting the Sacred Tetragrammaton confirm the synagogue had been active. Capernaum was an exceptional case in the region, where different religious communities chiefly tended to establish themselves in separate villages rather than live together (cf. S. L. Mattila, “Capernaum, Village of Nahum: From Hellenistic to Byzantine Times”, in: Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods: Vol. 2, 2015, pp. 249-251).

Archaeological history

The archaeological history of Capernaum began in 1838, when Edward Robinson identified the ruins of the synagogue, but did not make a connection between them and the Gospel site. Charles Wilson correctly identified the ruins of the synagogue in 1866. In 1894, the Custody of the Holy Land, via Br Giuseppe Baldi, purchased the ruins from the Bedouins. Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (Kohl e Watzinger), followed by Fr Wendelin von Menden, OFM, began their excavations in the early 1900s. In the 1920s, Fr Orfali, OFM, (1889-1926), a Franciscan from Nazareth, brought the Byzantine Basilica to light.

After a long pause, in 1968, the Custody entrusted excavations to Fr Virgilio Corbo, OFM, (1918-1991) and Fr Stanislao Loffreda, OFM (1932-2025). They were assisted by Fr Bellarmino Bagatti, OFM, and Fr Godfrey Kloetzly, OFM. That same year, they discovered a domus ecclesia dating back to the fourth century, below the octagonal church, and still deeper a house from the first century, confirming that half a century after Jesus’ death, a domestic area had been turned into a place of Christian worship in honour of Peter.

Corbo’s excavations resulted in the reconstruction of the entire chronology of the site, from the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000-1550 BC) to the Arab period (seventh century), as well as a revision of the dating of the monumental synagogue and the finding of an earlier synagogue from the time of Jesus. Corbo’s works concluded with a memorial above the House of Peter (1990). He was succeeded by Fr Loffreda, who investigated the Byzantine and Arab phases and edited the scientific series “Capernaum” (9 volumes, SBF). Fr Eugenio Alliata, OFM, catalogued the site’s entire stone materials (cf. https://www.custodia.org/it/santuari/cafarnao/).

Meanwhile, on the northeastern side of the town — property of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem — excavations led by Vassilios Tzaferis (1978-1987) uncovered four main areas. The team also discovered a roughly 200-metre-long imposing sea wall with two orthogonal piers stretching towards the lake, and a small fortune of 282 gold dinars from the Arab-Byzantine transition period (cf. Mattila, op. cit., pp. 226-228).

Franciscan presence

Still today, every day, friars of the Custody of the Holy Land welcome pilgrims who go to Capernaum seeking contact with “the city of Jesus”, with the places he set his eyes upon, where his voice resounded and where he carried out his works. The splendour of the white synagogue, the simplicity of the basalt stone homes, the house of Peter, turned first into a domus ecclesia, then into a Byzantine basilica, and today, into a memorial dedicated to Saint Peter, the silence of the lake in front — everything speaks of a presence that faith recognizes as still living.

As they gaze upon the remains of ancient Capernaum, pilgrims can “see” the homes and inhabitants of the ancient village and the Gospel stories set there, “hear” Jesus’ words on the Bread of Life resounding and profess with Peter: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).