Capernaum, the town of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee

Capernaum in the Bible: the town of Jesus

Capernaum does not appear in the Old Testament. It emerges in all four Gospels, where, after the lake itself, it is the place most often named in Jesus's ministry in Galilee.

Jesus leaves Nazareth for Capernaum

After his baptism and the arrest of John the Baptist, Jesus leaves the village of his childhood, Nazareth, up in the hills, for this lakeside town on a trade route, at the edge of the territory of Herod Antipas.

"And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim."

Matthew 4:13 (KJV)

It is by this lake that he calls his first disciples, the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew, then James and John (Matthew 4:18-22), and, in Capernaum itself, the tax collector Levi, also called Matthew (Mark 2:14; Matthew 9:9). Matthew ends up calling it simply "his own city" (Matthew 9:1).

A day in Capernaum (Mark 1)

Mark's Gospel describes a typical day: on the Sabbath, Jesus teaches in the synagogue and frees a possessed man; his hearers "were astonished at his doctrine" (Mark 1:21-28). On leaving, he enters the house of Simon and Andrew and heals Simon's mother-in-law of a fever (Mark 1:29-31). In the evening "all the city was gathered together at the door" (Mark 1:33).

The paralysed man lowered through the roof (Mark 2)

A few days later, word spreads that Jesus is "in the house". The crowd is so dense that four men carrying a paralysed friend have to open up the roof to lower him down in front of Jesus (Mark 2:1-12).

"And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them."

Mark 2:2 (KJV)

The centurion, the synagogue and the bread of life

In Capernaum a Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant. The village elders plead for him: "he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue" (Luke 7:5; Matthew 8:5-13). John's Gospel also places here the long discourse on the bread of life, given after the feeding of the five thousand: "These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum" (John 6:59). It is here, too, that Peter finds a coin in a fish's mouth to pay the Temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27).

The woe on Capernaum

The story ends on a dark note. Along with the neighbouring villages of Chorazin and Bethsaida, Capernaum is rebuked for not repenting despite the miracles, and compared to Sodom:

"And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day."

Matthew 11:23 (KJV)

Christian readers have often seen the ruins of the village, abandoned in the Middle Ages, as the fulfilment of this saying. The excavations, however, show a longer story: the village went on thriving for six more centuries after Jesus.

The Capernaum synagogue: white stone on black foundations

In the middle of a village of black basalt stands a building of white limestone brought from afar: the most richly decorated synagogue found so far in Galilee. Its prayer hall measures about 23 × 17 m, with colonnades on three sides, probably a gallery above and, on the east side, a courtyard lined with porticoes. The façade faces Jerusalem and opens through three doors.

• MaterialWhite limestone in a basalt village
• DateLate 4th – 5th century AD (coins sealed under the floor)
• Beneath itOlder basalt walls and floor, possibly 1st century
• DecorationMenorah, six-pointed star, Ark on wheels, plant motifs
• RestorationPartial, by the Franciscan Gaudenzio Orfali in the 1920s

Is the synagogue from the time of Jesus?

Not the building you see. For a long time it was dated to the 2nd-3rd century on stylistic grounds. But the Franciscan excavators Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda found thousands of late 4th-century coins and pottery sealed beneath the paving and in the fills, placing its construction in the late 4th or the 5th century. This late date is now the most widely accepted, though some scholars still question it. It makes the building a remarkable witness to Jewish life in Galilee in the Byzantine period, when churches were multiplying around the lake.

The basalt foundations: the synagogue of the Gospels?

Beneath the white synagogue, soundings exposed older basalt walls and a basalt floor following roughly the same plan. The excavators see them as the remains of a 1st-century synagogue, the one where Jesus taught according to the Gospels and which Luke credits to the centurion. The hypothesis is serious but debated: it is not certain that these remains belong to a public building rather than to houses. You can see them clearly at the base of the walls, where the black stone shows beneath the white.

The house of Peter and the memorial church

About thirty metres south of the synagogue, between the main street and the shore, the 1968 excavations uncovered an exceptional complex that archaeologists call the insula sacra, the "sacred block".

From a fisherman's house to a house-church

At first nothing sets this dwelling apart from its neighbours: rooms of dry-laid basalt stones grouped around courtyards, with fish hooks and net weights in the floors. But one room later had a different fate. Its walls were plastered and replastered, its floor carefully laid, and fragments of plaster were found covered with graffiti left by visitors in Greek, Syriac, Aramaic and Latin: prayers, crosses, names. Some readers, such as the Franciscan Emmanuele Testa, have identified the name of Peter; these readings remain debated. At a date that is also disputed, between the 1st and the 4th century, the room became a domus ecclesia, a house turned into a place of worship, and was then enclosed by a wall that cut it off from the village.

At the end of the 4th century, a pilgrimage account attributed to the traveller Egeria, preserved by the monk Peter the Deacon, notes that in Capernaum "the house of the prince of the apostles has been made into a church, whose walls still stand as they were".

The Byzantine octagonal church

In the 5th century the house-church was replaced by an octagonal church built directly over the venerated room, with a mosaic floor (the central panel shows a peacock). This centralised plan, typical of shrines marking a holy spot, shows that Christians of the time regarded the place as the house of Peter. Archaeology obviously cannot prove who lived there; what it does establish is a very early and continuous veneration, which is rare in the Holy Land.

The Memorial of Saint Peter (1990)

In 1990 the Franciscan Custody inaugurated a modern church above the ruins, designed by the Italian architect Ildo Avetta. Raised on pillars, it evokes a boat hovering over the fisherman's house. In the centre, a glass floor reveals the remains of the house and the Byzantine octagon; from outside, you can also look at them from below, in the shade of the building.

Kfar Nahum: history and excavations of the village

The name Kfar Nahum means "village of Nahum", though no one knows which Nahum; tradition has sometimes linked it to the prophet, without evidence. The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus mentions a spring called Capharnaum that waters the nearby plain of Gennesaret (Jewish War 3.519), and says he was carried, injured, to a village he calls Kepharnokos (Life 403). Founded around the 2nd century BC, the village probably had between a few hundred and 1,500 inhabitants in the time of Jesus. It lived from fishing, farming and the road running along the lake towards Damascus.

• 2nd century BC — the village is founded in the Hasmonean period.
• 1st century AD — Jesus settles in Capernaum according to the Gospels.
• 4th-5th century — white limestone synagogue; house-church, then octagonal church.
• Around 700 — in the early Islamic period the village is rebuilt slightly to the north-east; it is abandoned around the 11th century.
• 1838-1866 — the American Edward Robinson recognises a synagogue in the ruins of Tell Hum; in 1866 the Briton Charles Wilson identifies them as Capernaum.
• 1894 — the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land buys much of the land around the ruins.
• 1905-1926 — study by Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger, then excavations by the Franciscans Vendelin von Benden and Gaudenzio Orfali.
• 1968-2003 — campaigns of Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum): the house of Peter, the village, the dating of the synagogue.
• 1978-1982 — excavations by Vassilios Tzaferis on the Greek Orthodox side: a Byzantine and early Islamic village.
• 1990 — inauguration of the Memorial of Saint Peter.

The Franciscan excavations, published in the Cafarnao series, revealed a dense village of basalt houses grouped in blocks, with no large mansions or lavish public buildings before the Byzantine period. Stanislao Loffreda, who devoted much of his life to the site, died in 2025.

Visiting Capernaum today

The site is divided into two neighbouring parts, each with its own entrance. It lies within Kfar Nahum National Park, created by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, which has also landscaped the surroundings and the shore.

The Franciscan sanctuary: synagogue and house of Peter

The western part, the most visited, belongs to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. You enter through a gate near the car park, where a large statue of Saint Peter greets pilgrims. The visit follows the lanes of the basalt village to the white synagogue, which you can walk through, and then to the memorial church, where the house of Peter can be seen beneath the glass floor. A small garden of carved stones displays decorated blocks from the synagogue (menorah, star, Ark on wheels). Clothing covering shoulders and knees is required.

The Greek Orthodox side with the pink domes

A few hundred metres to the east, the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Holy Apostles, which belongs to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, is easy to spot from afar thanks to its pink domes. The church, founded in the 1920s and rebuilt in the 1980s, is entirely covered with frescoes painted in the late 1990s. Around it lie ruins of the Byzantine and early Islamic village, where the inhabitants had moved.

Around Capernaum: Tabgha and the Mount of Beatitudes

Together with its neighbours, Capernaum forms the "evangelical triangle" of the northern shore. About 3 km to the west, Tabgha is home to the Church of the Multiplication, with its famous Byzantine mosaic, and the Church of the Primacy of Peter. Just above, the Mount of Beatitudes commemorates the Sermon on the Mount. These places are presented on the page on the ministry of Jesus in Galilee. Further north, about twenty minutes' drive away, the great Canaanite and Israelite mound of Hazor takes you back a thousand years earlier.