Under sacred ground

ROME – There’s a reason St. Peter’s Basilica was built where it stands. A reason Michelangelo’s dome, Bernini’s spiral-columned canopy and the main altar are all precisely where they are.

It’s found in a single verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church.”

For 1,700 years, dating back to the construction of the original St. Peter’s by the emperor Constantine, Roman Catholic tradition has held that the main altar stands directly over St. Peter’s tomb.

Today, a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands who visit St. Peter’s each year are guided back through time, along an ancient subterranean path between two rows of fragile pagan and Christian tombs to view the evidence: a small pillar reputed to be part of one of the earliest monuments over the saint’s grave, a wall that once bore a faint Greek inscription sometimes translated as “Peter is here,” and 18 small bones enclosed in two plastic boxes, viewed through a small ragged hole in a wall 33 feet below the floor of the modern basilica.

Long obscured by Constantine’s landfill to create a flat plane on Vatican Hill for construction of the greatest church in Christendom, then built upon not once but twice, the ancient cemetery lay all but forgotten from the fourth century until 1939.

Only then – when workers excavating a tomb for the recently deceased Pope Pius XI broke through a wall beneath the church – was the ancient burial ground rediscovered.

Slow, careful excavation during the next 11 years opened more than 20 ancient tombs and led to the eventual discovery of bones determined to be those of a 60- to 70-year-old man who had died nearly 1,900 years earlier. In 1968, Pope Paul VI declared, despite doubts raised by a Jesuit archaeologist who had been in on the dig from the beginning, that the church was satisfied that the bones were St. Peter’s.

Today, the site is one of the holiest places in Rome, and because of its fragile nature, one visited by only a few who think weeks ahead and write to the Ufficio Scavi (Excavations Office) and ask to be included in one of the small, 90-minute guided tours.

Two thousand years ago, the oblong arena of emperor Nero’s circus stretched nearly 2,000 feet from what is now the entrance to St. Peter’s Square to beyond the basilica and just left of a centerline bisecting the basilica along its length.

Tradition holds that Peter was crucified, upside down, in the circus in 64 A.D., then buried just outside its walls. In time, after the persecution of Christians had subsided, successively larger monuments were erected over the grave.

A remnant of one, called the Trophy of Gaius, can be seen in the excavations. The remnant is a small white pillar trapped in a rough jumble of brick and mortar.

In the fourth century, Constantine built a retaining wall on Vatican Hill and began filling in with rubble, burying the ancient cemetery, to create a flat building ground for the original basilica atop the Trophy of Gaius.

Old St. Peter’s lasted into the 16th century, when the present basilica was built over it. Construction of the huge new cathedral had required sinking support columns deep into the earth. That uncovered hints of the ancient cemetery, but it was considered so holy that excavations were ruled out.

But after workers accidentally rediscovered the ancient cemetery in 1939, Pope Pius XII authorized careful exploration. That exploration eventually stretched about 230 feet under the central nave of St. Peter’s before workers had to stop for fear of destabilizing the basilica.

Visitors to the excavations descend stairs to a level about 33 feet below the floor of the modern basilica. There a glass door slides back to allow visitors through a low, narrow arch in a 16th-century supporting wall of the basilica. Immediately, there’s the damp, musty smell familiar to anyone who’s ever been in a rural storm cellar.

After a couple of twists and turns, a narrow, dimly lit lane stretches out before visitors. Like a row of small brick houses or storefronts, Christian and pagan tombs line the path.

As visitors walk among the tombs, they are walking slightly uphill along what was the surface of Vatican Hill more than 1,900 years ago.

Some tombs are decorated with images of pagan gods. Others have frescoes portraying Jesus as a fisherman or the Good Shepherd. One tomb belongs to a wealthy Roman tax collector.

Near the end of the excavations, visitors come to a supporting wall for the left side of the spiral canopy over the main altar of St. Peter’s. Next to the supporting wall is the small white pillar that remains from the Trophy of Gaius.

On the other side is what has become known as the graffiti wall, a fragment of which bears a few Greek letters for “Peter” and the start of a second word, which some believe in its entirety may have said “is here,” “in peace” or “within.”

Through a small ragged hole in the graffiti wall, visitors may glimpse two small clear plastic boxes containing 18 of the 19 human bones found on the site. The 19th bone has been retained by the pope in his private chapel.

One of the principal archaeologists involved, the Rev. Antonio Ferrua, went to his grave in 2003 at age 102 unconvinced that the bones were those of St. Peter. The contention that they were Peter’s bones rests on the sometimes disputed interpretation of graffiti and other evidence by another scholar, Margarita Guarducci.

Another Catholic tradition holds that Peter’s head, along with that of St. Paul, is in a gold reliquary atop the main altar of the Basilica of St. John Lateran elsewhere in Rome.

There is little doubt, however, that the builders of successive monuments on Vatican Hill – from the Trophy of Gaius to today’s basilica – all chose their site because they thought they were building atop Peter’s grave.

But ultimately, like so much else in religion and Rome, whether you believe this to be Peter’s resting place remains a matter of faith.