What was found. Capernaum (Kefar Naḥum), on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee, was excavated principally by the Franciscans Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda (western field, 1968–1986) and by Vassilios Tzaferis (eastern field, 1978–1987). The excavators describe an unwalled lakeshore village extending roughly 300–500 m along the shore, with an inhabited area of about 10–12 acres. Houses were built of unworked basalt fieldstones held with pebble-and-mortar fill, with no interior plaster, walls too weak for a second story, floors of packed earth or basalt cobbles, and thatched roofs of wood beams, reeds and mud, rooms clustered around shared courtyards, suited to extended families. Loffreda and Corbo put the population at no more than ~1,500 (estimates in the literature run 1,000–1,500). The excavators rank it above hamlets like Nazareth but far below cities like Sepphoris or Tiberias, no paved streets, sewage system, or monumental civic buildings in the 1st century. (Principal publications: Corbo, Cafarnao I, 1975; Loffreda, Recovering Capharnaum, 1993.)
The "insula sacra" / house of Peter (the identification, attributed). One housing block (Insula I) near the shore shows an unusual history: its largest room was re-plastered (floor and walls, unattested elsewhere in the village), its pottery shifts from ordinary household wares to oil lamps and storage jars (suggesting communal gatherings rather than family living), and in the following centuries pilgrims scratched graffiti in Greek, Syriac, Hebrew and Latin into the plaster, some invoking Peter. In the 4th century the room was enclosed in a house-church; in the 5th an octagonal memorial church was built directly over it (the modern Catholic church now stands suspended above the octagon). The excavators' argument (Corbo/Loffreda): this is the house of Peter remembered by the local Christian community from the 1st century onward, the room Jesus used as his Capernaum base (Mark 1:29-34; 2:1).
The caution: the 1st-century physical evidence shows a venerated, communally-used room, the name on it comes from the later veneration trail, so "Peter's house" is the excavators' (widely discussed) interpretation, not an inscription.
The synagogue (the dating dispute, both views). The white imported-limestone synagogue standing at Capernaum today, ashlar masonry, Corinthian columns, benches along the walls, is dated by most scholars to ~the 4th–5th century: the Franciscan excavations found thousands of late-4th/5th-century coins and pottery sealed beneath its stone pavement. It rests on a basalt foundation: Loffreda argued the basalt walls beneath are an earlier public building, plausibly the 1st-century synagogue of Luke 7:5 (the one the centurion built). Others counter that excavation under the floor revealed residential structures occupied into the 3rd/4th century, against a 1st-century synagogue on the spot. Both positions are live in the literature; this file picks no winner. What is not disputed: 1st-century synagogues existed in Galilee (Gamla, Magdala, see below), so the institution the Gospels describe is archaeologically real.
Sources (read live 2026-06-12): Anderson, "Simon Peter in Capernaum: An Archaeological Survey of the First-Century Village," BYU Religious Studies Center (rsc.byu.edu), a scholar-authored survey citing Corbo 1975, Loffreda 1974/1993, Spijkerman 1975. Formal references: V. Corbo, Cafarnao I (1975); S. Loffreda, Recovering Capharnaum (1993).
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