Capernaum Byzantine Church

Byzantine Octagonal Church, fifth century C.E., Capernaum, Galilee. Photograph by Todd Bolen.

For much of his adult life Jesus lived in the small fishing village of Capernaum. The Bible suggests that Jesus resided in Peter’s house (Matt 8:14-16). In 1968 archaeologists uncovered beneath the foundations of an octagonal fifth-century Byzantine ‘martyrium’ church a simple first-century C.E. home that may have been the house of Peter. While the evidence that this was Peter’s house is not conclusive, Peter has been associated with this spot since at least mid-first century C.E. In 1990, the Franciscan order built a glass-floored hexagonal church on top of the site.