Tradition holds that this was Peter’s house. It served as a meeting place for believers during Christianity’s formative years. One hundred thirty-one inscriptions in Greek, Aramaic, Syrian, and Latin, many including Jesus’s name, were discovered in the plaster.
In the fifth century all the private homes of the insula ("city block") were destroyed to make way for construction of the church. Preserving the house’s original shape, the church was octagonal, with an apse, and a baptistery in the center. In the seventh century the town was apparently abandoned and the site forgotten until the Franciscans bought the land in the late nineteenth century.
The Franciscans conducted archaeological excavations and restored the synagogue and the church. Recently they built the modern church over the site of St. Peter’s house. The glass floor in the center of the church allows you to look into the original church below.
