St Paul Outside the Walls Basilica (consecrated in 324 according to Roman tradition)

A burial place, not a palace

Unlike St John Lateran, which was born of the gift of an imperial palace, or St Mary Major, which crowns the summit of the Esquiline, St Paul's is a funerary basilica. It marks the exact place where, according to the oldest Roman tradition, St Paul was buried after his martyrdom under Nero, around the year 67. It is this tomb — the memoria apostoli, "the memory of the Apostle" — that fixed its location in the Roman countryside and imposed its name.^[8]

As the priest Gaius wrote as early as the turn of the 3rd century, in a famous passage preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea: "I can show you the trophies of the apostles: if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of the founders of this Church."^[9] The Vatican for Peter, the Ostian Way for Paul: Roman Christian topography was fixed well before Constantine.

A countryside basilica

In Roman times, burying the dead inside a city's walls was forbidden by sacred law and civil law. The great roads leading out of Rome — the Via Appia, the Via Ostiense, the Via Aurelia — were lined with tombs and funerary monuments. St Paul, executed outside the city, was therefore buried in open country, on the edge of the Via Ostiense — on the spot that today lies about two kilometres from the Aurelian Walls (the defensive wall raised under Emperor Aurelian in the 270s, two centuries after the martyrdom).^[10]

The basilica later raised over this tomb thus stood outside the sacred pomerium — the religious boundary delimiting the city — and outside the fortified wall — hence its Italian and Latin name: Sancti Pauli extra muros, San Paolo fuori le Mura, "St Paul Outside the Walls". This designation is not a mere geographical marker: it expresses fidelity to the memory of the martyrdom, which forbade moving the basilica to a more convenient site inside the walls.

A primacy of apostolic memory

St Paul's does not dispute with the Lateran its dignity as cathedral, nor with St Peter's its closeness to the tomb of the "prince of the apostles". Its greatness is of another order: it is the house of the Apostle to the Nations, the sanctuary of the one who carried the Gospel to the Gentiles. Its prestige radiates over the whole of universal Christendom — wherever the Gospel has been preached to non-Jews, St Paul Outside the Walls is, indirectly, the sanctuary of origin.

From the cella memoriae to the first basilica

Before Constantine, Paul's tomb was not without a monument. A cella memoriae — a small Christian funerary building — had been raised there as early as the end of the 2nd century, or even earlier, following Roman practices of venerating illustrious dead.^[11] The surrounding quarter soon afterwards saw the development of the catacomb of Commodilla, one of the Christian necropolises of Rome.

It was this primitive sanctuary that Constantine, after his victory at the Milvian Bridge (28 October 312) and the Edict of Milan (313) which gave freedom to Christian worship, decided to turn into a public monument. The Liber Pontificalis, the official collection of the lives of the popes compiled from the 6th century onwards, explicitly attributes to the emperor the building of a first basilica over the Apostle's tomb — just as he had had one raised over Peter's tomb in the Vatican.^[12] The gesture echoes the companion article on the old St Peter's Basilica: Constantine endowed the Roman Church with a coherent network of sanctuaries over the tombs of its founders.

The consecration by Sylvester I, 18 November 324

Roman tradition fixes 18 November 324 as the consecration of the Constantinian basilica by Pope Sylvester I (314-335), in the same year — or even on the same day according to some sources — as that of the old St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.^[13] The two great sanctuaries of the apostles thus received their dedication simultaneously, founding a double apostolic pilgrimage that marked the whole spiritual history of Rome.

The Constantinian building was modest compared with the imperial basilica that would replace it sixty years later: probably a single nave, a simple plan, but already facing west — apse to the west following the usage of the great Constantinian basilicas of Rome, like the old St Peter's^[14] — to preserve the orientation of the memoria over the tomb.^[15] No architectural trace of it survives: the basilica of Theodosius, then the fire of 1823, erased every material memory of Sylvester's work.

The basilica of the three emperors (384-395)

The Constantinian sanctuary soon became too narrow for the crowds of pilgrims. Between 384 and 395, three reigning emperors — Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius — had a gigantic basilica raised over Paul's tomb, comparable to the greatest civil buildings of the empire.^[16][17] The works began by demolishing Constantine's building. The new basilica was designed with five naves, about one hundred and thirty metres long and sixty-five wide^[18][19], and preceded by a colonnaded atrium.

The work continued under Honorius (395-423), who completed its construction and decoration; the building was consecrated by Pope Siricius around 390-391 — a debated dating: the historian André Chastagnol retains 391, the Italian notice 390, while other notices place the consecration around 402 under Innocent I —, before the complete finishing of the interior decoration.^[20][21] For the first time, a Christian building rivalled in majesty the great monuments of Roman paganism. This Theodosian basilica, completed under St Leo the Great in the 5th century, would remain practically intact for fourteen centuries, until the night of 15 July 1823.

A basilica for the Apostle to the Nations

The choice to build on such a scale for Paul, at a time when Rome was going through major political crises, speaks of the place the Apostle to the Nations held in Christian consciousness. Paul is the one who carried the Gospel to the Gentiles, who inaugurated the universal mission, who wrote the greater part of the New Testament. His basilica had to match the universality of his apostolate. This theological logic can already be read in the Latin-cross plan with five naves, which reproduces the image of a sea of faithful come from every nation.

The triumphal-arch mosaic (5th century)

Above the altar, separating the nave from the apses, the triumphal arch of the Theodosian basilica received in the 5th century a monumental mosaic whose composition has remained, through every restoration, substantially the same. At the centre, Christ blessing in bust, flanked by two angels and the twenty-four Elders of the Apocalypse offering their crowns; below, the figures of the apostles Peter and Paul.^[22] This Apocalypse iconography makes the sanctuary a visible image of the heavenly liturgy — the idea that the earthly liturgy, celebrated at the foot of the arch, mysteriously prolongs the eternal praise of the elect.

The mosaic, restored after the fire of 1823 by Venetian artists, preserves the original composition attributed to the Empress Galla Placidia (around 440), daughter of Theodosius and great patroness of the Roman Church.^[23]

The frieze of the popes' medallions

Here appears the basilica's most distinctive visual signature: the unbroken frieze of medallions of all the popes, running above the columns of the naves and around the transept. The initiative belongs to St Leo the Great (440-461), who decided in the 5th century to depict in the basilica the whole succession of Peter's successors — not as a personal tribute to each, but as a catechesis in images of Roman primacy and of the unbroken apostolic succession.^[24]

The original portraits were frescoes; after the fire of 1823, Pius IX decided in 1847 to redo them in mosaic on a gold ground, in round medallions about 137 cm in diameter, visible thirteen metres above the floor.^[25] At the presentation of Leo XIV's medallion on 14 January 2026, the series numbered 267 portraits — one per pope, from St Peter to Leo XIV, elected on 8 May 2025 as the 267th successor of Peter (Francis being the 266th)^[26][27] — and it keeps being extended with each new election: the count therefore changes with every pontificate. It is the only gallery in the world to show, in a single glance and without interruption, two thousand years of the papacy.

"The very ancient tradition of St Paul Outside the Walls, of depicting all the popes in one long series of medallions, is one of the finest visual signatures of apostolic continuity. Each new pope takes his place, in the spot that belongs to him, in a golden chain reaching back to Peter." — Official presentation of the basilica, vatican.va^[28]

A popular legend — which the basilica denies according to the documentary site Essence of Rome — claims that only a limited number of empty medallions remain, and that the pope who fills the last place will be the last pope in history before Christ's return. The reality is simple: the frieze is completed gradually, and new series of niches are opened as space runs out.^[29]

The apse mosaic (1220)

The apse of the basilica was decorated at the beginning of the 13th century with a colossal mosaic — one of the vastest in Rome — commissioned by Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) and executed by Venetian mosaicists under his pontificate.^[30][31] Christ is enthroned there in majesty at the centre, larger than life, flanked by the apostles Peter, Paul and Andrew, and the evangelist Luke. At his feet, tiny, a kneeling figure represents Honorius III himself, the commissioner; on the right, two saints intercede for another believer shown on a smaller scale.

Restored after 1823 by Venetian artists — the original mosaics having largely survived the fire — this apse remains one of the peaks of late Byzantine art in Italy. The iconography of Christ in Majesty between these four figures is a profession of faith in stone: the basilica of Paul does not isolate itself in the cult of a single saint; it takes its place in the communion of the whole Church, around the one Christ.

The Benedictines, guardians of the tomb

At the dawn of the 8th century, Pope Gregory II (715-731) installed near the basilica a Benedictine monastery charged with guarding the tomb and celebrating the liturgy without interruption.^[32] The abbey, which was to supply priests and chanters to the basilica, grew considerably in importance and became, in the Middle Ages, one of the great Roman monastic centres.

In 936, the great reformer St Odo of Cluny came to Rome at the request of the patrician Alberic II to reform Roman monastic life. Odo appointed Baldwin of Monte Cassino as abbot of St Paul's, attaching the abbey to the Cassinese tradition. Later, St Gregory VII (1073-1085), before his pontificate, was himself abbot of the monastery — proof of the prestige attached to this office.^[33]

The abbey, a member of the Subiaco-Cassinese Benedictine congregation, forms with the basilica an extraterritorial complex governed by an archpriest (motu proprio of 30 May 2005) and remains active under its abbot's direction; its monks, heirs of this millennial tradition, provide the basilica's daily liturgy and the spiritual guard of the sanctuary.^[34][35]

The fortified town of Joannispolis (9th century)

The turn of the 9th century plunged Rome into the terror of the Saracen raids. In 846, an Arab fleet sailed up the Tiber and plundered the extra-mural basilicas of St Peter and St Paul, which were not protected by the city's walls. The sacrilege struck the whole of Christendom with horror.^[36]

In response, Pope John VIII (872-882) had a mighty fortified rampart built around the basilica, the monastery and the neighbouring village, creating a veritable small town to which his name was given: Joannispolis, the "city of John".^[37] This enclosure, still mentioned in the 13th century, turned St Paul's into a religious citadel able to withstand incursions. Beyond its military function, Joannispolis expresses the visceral attachment of the popes to this sanctuary, which they could not leave defenceless, even two hours' walk from Rome.

The Byzantine bronzes of Pantaleone (1070)

In the 11th century — around 1070 according to the French notice —, under the pontificate of Alexander II and while the future St Gregory VII was still abbot of Monte Cassino, a rich Amalfitan merchant settled in Constantinople, Pantaleone of Amalfi, offered St Paul's a monumental bronze door.^[38][39] The door, made up of fifty-four panels damascened with silver depicting scenes of Christ, the apostles and the saints, was executed by the finest Byzantine artists of the imperial capital. Badly damaged by the fire of 1823, it is today kept as a precious relic inside the basilica, after restoration.

The ciborium of Arnolfo di Cambio (1285)

Above the papal altar rises the Gothic ciborium — a sort of openwork stone canopy sheltering the altar — executed in 1285 by the Florentine sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio and his associate Peter, as the inscription engraved at the foot of the work attests: "Hoc opus fecit Arnulfus cum suo socio Petro".^[40] The whole rests on four ancient columns of red porphyry, topped with finely carved foliate capitals.

At the four corners stand the statues of St Paul and St Peter — the two founding apostles of the Roman Church —, of St Timothy, Paul's disciple and the recipient of two of his epistles, and of St Benedict, patron of the monks who serve the basilica. It is one of the first major works of the young Arnolfo di Cambio, future architect of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, and a major milestone of the first Gothic Renaissance in central Italy.

An extraordinary fact: during the fire of 1823, the transept held firm, largely preserving the ciborium and several mosaics; the apse, the triumphal arch, the cloister and the candelabrum were also saved^[41][42], thus safeguarding Arnolfo's masterpiece for centuries to come. Today, the ciborium rises at the heart of the rebuilt basilica as a living witness of the medieval sanctuary.

The paschal candelabrum of the Vassalletto (around 1170)

On the left side of the choir stands a twisted column of white marble, five metres sixty high, adorned with figures of saints, apostles, angels and episodes from the life of Christ. It is the paschal candelabrum, executed in 1170 by the Roman sculptors Nicola d'Angelo and Pietro Vassalletto, on which the great candle symbolising the risen Christ is set up each year at the Easter Vigil.^[43][44] The work, by its plastic quality and iconographic ambition, is one of the peaks of Roman Romanesque sculpture.

The Vassalletto cloister (1205-1241)

Beside the basilica opens a medieval cloister of rare elegance, raised between 1205 and 1241 by the same dynasty of Roman marble craftsmen, the Vassalletto, who worked at the same time on the cloister of St John Lateran.^[45][46] The galleries rest on paired colonnettes, some of them twisted, inlaid with mosaics of gold and coloured glass — the so-called Cosmatesque style, characteristic of Roman Romanesque art.

This cloister too largely escaped the fire: there one still breathes the silence and geometric purity of medieval Rome. Today it houses a small lapidary museum gathering epigraphic and architectural fragments brought back to the surface after the catastrophe of 1823.

An unbroken memory

The tomb of St Paul lies directly beneath the papal altar, in the confessio — the underground part accessible from the central nave. Its memory is attested without interruption since the turn of the 3rd century: the priest Gaius, quoted by Eusebius, already spoke of Paul's "trophy" "on the Ostian Way".^[47] For two thousand years, no Christian generation has lost track of this place, which has always been the material orientation of the basilica: it is on it that the high altar is aligned, and it is to it that pilgrims' eyes turn.

The 2002-2006 excavations

At the beginning of the 21st century, on the occasion of works preparing for the Pauline Year, a team of Vatican archaeologists, led by Giorgio Filippi, archaeologist of the Vatican Museums, was authorised to examine the marble sarcophagus beneath the altar.^[48] The sarcophagus, which had never been opened since antiquity, bears on a marble plaque the inscription PAULO APOSTOLO MART — "to Paul apostle martyr".^[49]

The analyses stretched from 2002 to 2006^[50]. Through a tiny opening made in the sarcophagus, a special probe was introduced, which revealed the presence of purple linen fabrics shot through with threads of pure gold, a blue fabric with linen filaments, grains of red incense and protein and limestone substances.^[51] The presence of purple and gold attests that this was the burial of a person held to be of consequence.

The announcement of Benedict XVI, 28 June 2009

At the close of the Pauline Year — which celebrated the bimillennium of St Paul's birth, opened by Benedict XVI on 28 June 2008 —, at First Vespers of the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, on 28 June 2009, in this same basilica, Pope Benedict XVI announced the results of the analyses before the gathered assembly:

"In the sarcophagus, which has never been opened in all these centuries, a very small opening was made to introduce a special probe, through which traces were found of a precious purple-coloured linen fabric, shot through with pure gold, and of a blue-coloured fabric with linen filaments. The presence was also noted of grains of red incense and of protein and limestone substances. In addition, tiny bone fragments, submitted to radiocarbon examination by experts unaware of their provenance, proved to belong to a person who lived between the 1st and 2nd century." — Benedict XVI, homily at First Vespers of the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, 28 June 2009^[52]

The Pope soberly concluded that these analyses "seem to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that these are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul".^[53] No evidence contradicts the tradition; the clues converge, without constituting absolute proof. For the first time since antiquity, the Church thus had modern scientific evidence — radiocarbon dating, residue analysis, study of the fabrics — which seems to confirm what tradition had always held.

See also: The meaning of relics in the Catholic faith — which sets this convergence of evidence within the millennial tradition of venerating holy bodies.

A catastrophe in one night

In the night of 15 to 16 July 1823, while Pope Pius VII, dying, lay in agony at the Quirinal, a fire of unheard-of violence ravaged the basilica. The cause — according to the account of the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), the Vatican page not specifying the origin of the disaster — was, paradoxically, a work of conservation: a workman was repairing the lead covering of part of the roof when a badly extinguished hearth, or a spark, set the dry wooden framework ablaze.^[54] Within a few hours, the flames reached the whole nave. Molten lead flowed from the roof timbers; the marble columns burst in the heat; the coffered ceiling collapsed. By morning, the great Theodosian basilica was no more than a field of charred stones.

"The basilica had preserved its primitive character for one thousand four hundred and thirty-five years." — Catholic Encyclopedia, article "St. Paul-Without-The-Walls", 1911^[55]

The transept held firm, largely preserving the ciborium of Arnolfo di Cambio and several mosaics; the apse with its mosaic, the triumphal arch, the Vassalletto cloister and the paschal candelabrum were also saved.^[56][57] By contrast, the splendid cycle of frescoes of the central nave, the work of Pietro Cavallini, was irretrievably destroyed, and the 14th-century campanile, left unscathed by the flames, had to be pulled down.^[58] The Byzantine doors of Pantaleone, seriously damaged, were saved and kept as relics.

Worldwide emotion

News of the fire stirred, throughout Europe and beyond, a unique emotion. St Paul Outside the Walls was not only a Catholic sanctuary: it was one of the oldest visible monuments of early Christianity, almost intact since Theodosius. Its destruction was a loss for the whole of mankind. Pius VII, in his death throes, was not told of the catastrophe — his entourage feared it would hasten his end. The Pope died on 20 August 1823, without having known.

His successor, Leo XII (1823-1829), elected on 28 September, at once made the rebuilding of St Paul's one of the major priorities of his pontificate. On 25 January 1825, he published the letter Ad plurimas easque gravissimas, addressed to the whole Catholic world, calling on every diocese to contribute to the rebuilding.^[59]

The architects and the choice of the identical

Three architects succeeded one another at the head of the worksite. Giuseppe Valadier, the great neoclassical architect of Pius VII, drew up the first plans. Pasquale Belli directed the initial phase until his death in 1833. Luigi Poletti then took over and carried the work through to his own death in 1869.^[60][61]

The fundamental choice — debated at the time, but finally retained — was to rebuild the basilica identically: the same proportions, the same five-nave plan, the same one-hundred-and-thirty-one-metre length, the same eighty monolithic columns separating the naves. Far from an act of archaism, this choice expressed a fidelity to the memory of the place: the basilica of Theodosius and Leo the Great was to be reborn, as far as possible, in the form it had borne for fourteen centuries.

The international gifts

The rebuilding was financed by an outpouring of worldwide Catholic generosity without precedent since the crusades:

• Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (1796-1855) — though Orthodox, and tsar of an empire then repressing the Polish resistance — sent to Rome the blocks of malachite and lapis lazuli which today adorn the transept altars.^[62][63]
• The Viceroy of Egypt Mehemet Ali (1769-1849) — a Muslim ruler and great moderniser of Cairo — offered alabaster columns, and King Fuad I of Egypt, in the 20th century, the columns and windows of very fine alabaster which filter a characteristic golden light.^[64][65]
• At Leo XII's call, the faithful of the whole world answered with gifts — the long list of their names is engraved along the walls of the apse.^[66]

This ecumenism of generosity — an Orthodox tsar, a Muslim ruler, a France Catholic once more after the Revolution — shows how far St Paul Outside the Walls overflowed its role as a confessional sanctuary: it was recognised as a universal heritage.

The solemn consecration by Pius IX, 10 December 1854

On 5 October 1840, Pope Gregory XVI consecrated the rebuilt papal altar and transept, beneath Arnolfo's ciborium at last reinstalled.^[67][68] But it was on 10 December 1854 that Blessed Pius IX, in the presence of very many cardinals and bishops come from the whole world — fifty cardinals and one hundred and eighty-five bishops according to the English-language notice —, presided over the solemn consecration of the fully rebuilt basilica^[69][70]. The date was no accident: two days earlier, on 8 December 1854, the same pope had proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by the bull Ineffabilis Deus. St Paul's thus gave thanks, in the light of Mary Immaculate, for its own resurrection.

The solemn vows of the Society of Jesus (22 April 1541)

It was in the ancient basilica, still in its medieval state, that one of the founding acts of the Society of Jesus took place. On 17 April 1541, Ignatius of Loyola had just been elected, unanimously minus his own vote, first Superior General of the newborn order. On Friday 22 April 1541, Friday of the Easter octave, the six Roman companions — Ignatius, Lainez, Salmerón, Bobadilla, Codure and Brouet — went together to St Paul Outside the Walls and there pronounced their solemn vows before the altar of Our Lady, in the chapel of the relics of the Apostle Paul.^[71][72] That day, they signed the Formula Instituti of 1540, the founding charter of the Society. The choice of St Paul's was no accident: it was under the patronage of the Apostle to the Nations that Ignatius placed the universal missionary work he wished to found.

The details are developed in the companion article on the foundation of the Society of Jesus.

The announcement of the Second Vatican Council (25 January 1959)

On 25 January 1959, feast of the Conversion of St Paul, Pope St John XXIII (canonised in 2014), elected three months earlier, was presiding at St Paul Outside the Walls over the traditional closing celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Before a consistory of cardinals expecting nothing unusual, the Pope suddenly announced his decision to convene an ecumenical council — the future Second Vatican Council.^[73]

"Before you, venerable brethren and dearly beloved sons, we pronounce, certainly trembling a little with emotion, but at the same time with humble firmness of purpose, the name and the proposal of a twofold celebration: a diocesan Synod for Rome, and an Ecumenical Council for the universal Church." — St John XXIII, address at St Paul Outside the Walls, 25 January 1959^[74]

The chosen place was highly symbolic. To announce, in the basilica of Paul, "the Apostle to the Nations", a council for the aggiornamento of the Church in the modern world, was to inscribe the future Vatican II from the outset under the twofold banner of universal dialogue and apostolic fidelity. For details, see the article on the Second Vatican Council.

The Pauline Year (2008-2009) and the Jubilee 2025

On the occasion of the bimillennium of St Paul's birth — placed by historians between 6 BC and AD 10 —, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed, from 28 June 2008 to 29 June 2009, a Pauline Year which made St Paul Outside the Walls the centre of worldwide Catholic pilgrimage. It was in the course of this year that the analyses of the sarcophagus were carried out and the radiocarbon results announced (see above).

During the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025 — opened on 24 December 2024 by Pope Francis with the Holy Door of St Peter's —, the Holy Door of St Paul Outside the Walls was solemnly opened on 5 January 2025 by Cardinal James M. Harvey, archpriest of the basilica: pilgrimage to St Paul's, together with the usual conditions (confession, communion, prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff), makes it possible to gain the Jubilee plenary indulgence.^[75][76]

An extraterritorial basilica (1929)

At the Lateran Treaties of 11 February 1929 between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy — which ended the Roman Question opened by the taking of Rome in 1870 —, St Paul Outside the Walls was placed, like St John Lateran and St Mary Major, under the regime of extraterritoriality: it is henceforth the property of the Holy See, subject to the jurisdiction of the Vatican and not to that of the Italian Republic, even though it stands physically on the territory of the city of Rome.^[77]

The relic of the Roman chain

The basilica keeps, in a precious shrine, the chain by which, according to tradition, St Paul was bound to the Roman soldier guarding him during his captivity at Rome, while awaiting his trial.^[78] The presence of this relic materially links the basilica to the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles and to the Pauline Epistles themselves: "I am bound with chains, like a criminal, but the word of God is not bound" (2 Tm 2:9). This chain, venerated as one of the Christo-Pauline treasures of the sanctuary, is exposed to the devotion of pilgrims.

The Seven Churches pilgrimage

St Paul Outside the Walls is one of the seven churches of the Seven Churches pilgrimage of Rome, codified by St Philip Neri in the 16th century (St Peter's, St Paul Outside the Walls, St John Lateran, St Mary Major, St Sebastian Outside the Walls, Holy Cross in Jerusalem and St Lawrence Outside the Walls).^[79] This circuit of prayer, a walk of more than twenty kilometres through the city and the Roman countryside, remains a living practice today, particularly during the Jubilee.

A basilica of fragile memory

St Paul Outside the Walls bears, more than any other basilica in Rome, the weight and the grace of a fragile memory. Its first basilica of Constantine vanished under Theodosius; the Theodosian basilica, though so solid that it survived the barbarian invasions, the earthquakes and the Saracen sacks, collapsed in one night through the carelessness of a single man. If the fire of 1823 deprived us of the ancient monument, it also made the Church attentive to what it possessed: St Paul's might never have been restored with such care had its loss not been made tangible.

A basilica of universality

More than the other Roman basilicas, St Paul's bears a Catholic vocation in the etymological sense — kath' holou, "according to the whole", universal. The Tsar of all the Russias sent his malachite; the Viceroy of Egypt his alabasters; the cardinals and bishops of the whole world consecrated the rebuilt building there. It was at St Paul's that the Society of Jesus pronounced its missionary vows; it was at St Paul's that Vatican II was announced. The Apostle to the Nations protects, through the memory of his tomb, the universal movement of evangelisation.

A basilica of Christ and the Apostle

At the heart of the basilica, on the triumphal arch, Christ blessing is enthroned between Peter and Paul. In the apse, Christ in Majesty is enthroned between Peter, Paul, Andrew and Luke. Beneath the altar, Paul's tomb. Above the altar, Arnolfo's ciborium with its statues of Paul, Peter, Timothy and Benedict. Everywhere, Christ and his Apostle: not once does Paul appear alone, like an isolated hero. The whole basilica repeats aloud the words Paul himself wrote: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). The greatness of the Apostle is never anything but a transparency to that of the Master.

• The building of the old St Peter's Basilica — the other great Constantinian basilica over the Apostle's tomb, twin sister of St Paul Outside the Walls.
• St John Lateran Basilica — the Pope's cathedral, first in dignity of all the basilicas of the West.
• The building of the present St Peter's Basilica (1506-1626) — the building campaign which supplanted Peter's old basilica, at the same time as St Paul's still kept its ancient state.
• The meaning of relics in the Catholic faith — to understand the significance of the radiocarbon confirmation of Paul's sarcophagus.
• The foundation of the Society of Jesus — the vows of 22 April 1541 pronounced in the basilica.
• The Second Vatican Council — announced by St John XXIII in this same basilica on 25 January 1959.
• The Neronian persecutions — the context of Paul's martyrdom at Rome around the year 67.