Rome: The City Where Paul's Journey Ended

No city looms larger over the horizon of the New Testament than Rome. Capital of an empire that reached from Britain to the Euphrates, it is the goal toward which the second half of the Acts of the Apostles steadily moves, the destination of Paul's appeal to Caesar, the community to which he addressed his longest and most influential letter, and — by early and consistent tradition — the place of his death. This entry gathers what the sources say about Rome in Paul's story. Claims are labelled by their evidentiary weight: (Scripture) for what the New Testament text states, (Tradition) for what later Christian tradition holds, and (Scholarship) for the reconstructions of modern historians. Dates are given as ranges, because Pauline chronology is a careful reconstruction anchored on only a handful of fixed points.

Where it is

Rome — Latin *Roma* — stands on the River Tiber in central Italy, in the region the Romans simply called *Italia*. In Paul's lifetime it was the administrative and symbolic heart of the empire, ruled during his Roman years by the emperor Nero (reigned AD 54–68). (Scholarship) The coordinates for this entry point to the Roman Forum, the civic and religious centre of the ancient city; as with Tarsus, Antioch and Jerusalem, the classical centre lies beneath and among the streets of the living modern capital, so the ancient city survives in fragments exposed across today's Rome. (Scholarship)

Rome in Paul's story

Long before he saw it, Rome was fixed as Paul's goal. Luke reports him resolving, during the third journey: "After I have been there [Jerusalem], I must see Rome also" (Acts 19:21, Douay-Rheims). (Scripture) The resolve is confirmed in a night vision during his later Jerusalem custody: "Be constant; for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome" (Acts 23:11). (Scripture)

A Christian community already existed in the city before Paul reached it — he writes to it as an established church, and Acts records its members coming out along the road to meet him: "when the brethren had heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and the Three Taverns" (Acts 28:15). (Scripture) How the Roman church was founded is nowhere recorded in the New Testament. That the city holds Peter and Paul together as its twin apostolic patrons — the tradition behind the joint feast on 29 June — is a matter of later Christian memory, not of the Acts narrative. (Tradition)

The letter written before he arrived

Among Paul's undisputed letters, the Epistle to the Romans is the longest and most systematic, and, unusually, it was written to a church he had not yet visited or founded (Romans 1:8–15). (Scripture / Scholarship) He addresses it "To all that are at Rome, the beloved of God, called to be saints" (Romans 1:7). (Scripture) In it he states his hope to travel on *beyond* Rome to Spain: "When I shall begin to take my journey into Spain, I hope that as I pass, I shall see you, and be brought on my way thither by you" (Romans 15:24). (Scripture) Whether that Spanish journey ever took place is debated (see below). Most scholars place the writing of Romans at Corinth, near the end of the third journey, around AD 57. (Scholarship)

Arrest, appeal, and the voyage

Paul reached Rome not as a free missionary but as a prisoner. Arrested in the temple at Jerusalem and held about two years at Caesarea, he exercised his right as a Roman citizen and appealed to Caesar: "I appeal to Caesar" (Acts 25:11). (Scripture) He was then shipped westward under guard. The voyage — the storm, the two-week drift, and the shipwreck at Malta — fills one of the vivid first-person "we-passages" of Acts (Acts 27:1–28:14). (Scripture) The party came up through Puteoli and along the Appian Way, met by Roman believers, and "when we were come to Rome, Paul was suffered to dwell by himself, with a soldier that kept him" (Acts 28:16). (Scripture)

Acts closes with Paul under this loose house arrest, teaching freely: he "remained two whole years in his own hired lodging... preaching the kingdom of God... with all confidence, without prohibition" (Acts 28:30–31). (Scripture) The narrative stops there, around AD 62, without recording the outcome of his trial or his death — an abrupt ending that has long puzzled readers and scholars alike. (Scholarship) On why Acts ends where it does, and how to weigh it as a source, see the Acts of the Apostles.

What remains, and what a visitor sees

Rome preserves the richest classical cityscape of any place in Paul's world — the Forum, the Appian Way, and much else — yet almost none of it is a documented Pauline site, and much of the monumental Rome a visitor sees today (the Colosseum, for instance) was built after Paul's lifetime. (Scholarship) The places named in Acts can still be traced in the landscape: the Via Appia along which Paul approached the city, and the stations of *Appii Forum* (Forum of Appius) and the *Three Taverns* (Tres Tabernae) where believers came to meet him. (Scripture) These are geographical anchors rather than shrines.

The traditional focus of Pauline memory is the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls (San Paolo fuori le Mura), on the Ostian Way south of the ancient centre, which later tradition marks as the site of the Apostle's burial. (Tradition) It should be read as a place of commemoration built long after the 1st century, not as an archaeologically demonstrated Pauline site.

Fact and tradition

The distinction matters most at the end of Paul's life. The New Testament places him in Rome as a prisoner and leaves him there teaching (Scripture); it does not narrate his death. That Paul was martyred at Rome under Nero — beheaded, as befitted a Roman citizen, and buried on the Ostian Way — is early and consistent tradition: the letter known as 1 Clement (c. AD 95–96) is the earliest witness that Paul "bore witness before the rulers" and departed the world; Tertullian, writing about AD 200, is the first to state the beheading explicitly; and the early-fourth-century historian Eusebius places the martyrdom under Nero. (Tradition) Modern scholarship generally accepts a Roman martyrdom under Nero as probable, given the early and multiple attestation, while bracketing the date between about AD 62 and 67. (Scholarship)

A further, contested reconstruction holds that Paul was released around AD 62, travelled on — perhaps toward the Spain of Romans 15:24 — and was re-arrested and executed only later. This depends partly on whether the Pastoral Epistles are authentically Paul's, which many scholars doubt, and is best labelled a plausible but unproven reconstruction rather than a fact. (Scholarship)

For the fuller life behind these events, see our reference on the Apostle Paul; and for the city at the other end of his story, his birthplace, see where Tarsus is and why Tarsus.

From Tarsus to Rome

That arc — from a diaspora childhood in Tarsus to a prisoner's lodging and, by tradition, a martyr's grave in Rome — is what St Paul Global Week marks, in the Apostle's own birthplace rather than the city of his death. On 28–30 June 2027, around the 29 June Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, a faith-tourism gathering organised by Funny Tourism brings pilgrims to Tarsus and Mersin, with the Feast Day prayer programme broadcast live worldwide. You are warmly invited to explore the programme, to read about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme, or to contact the team.