On Rome’s busy Via Ostiensis, between civic numbers 106 and 108, a weathered marble plaque marks a spot easy to overlook. It commemorates the traditional site where Peter and Paul — the princes of the apostles, the foundational figures of early Christianity — are said to have shared a final embrace before their separate martyrdoms.
There is no scriptural record of this moment. The Bible presents their missions as largely distinct, each marked by different companions, challenges, and regions of ministry.
Paul’s farewell to the elders of Ephesus, described in Acts 20, is perhaps one of the most emotional scenes in the New Testament, but Peter is not present.
The last mention of Peter in Acts shows him leaving Jerusalem, and the epistles offer little detail about his later movements.
Nowhere in the biblical texts is there a recorded parting between these two apostles.
Yet Christian tradition has long filled this silence. According to local memory, Maria Paola Daud writes, Peter and Paul walked part of the Via Ostiense together, before parting ways — Paul to the site now known as the Tre Fontane (Three Fountains), where he was likely beheaded, and Peter to Nero’s Circus, where he was crucified upside down.
For centuries, a small chapel known as the Capella della Separazione stood near the midpoint between Porta San Paolo and the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. It marked their parting. That chapel was demolished in the early 20th century to accommodate growing traffic. Only the plaque remains.
The inscription reads:
“Near this site, a devoted little chapel in honour of the Holy Crucifix, was demolished in the early 20th century due to the expansion of the Via Ostiense, and marked the spot where, according to a pious tradition, the Princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul parted ways on the road to their glorious martyrdom.”
The tradition of their final embrace draws not from Scripture but from the artistic and literary imagination of the Church. The famous “incident at Antioch,” mentioned in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, is one of the few biblical interactions between the two: Paul publicly challenges Peter over his inconsistent treatment of Gentile converts.
While no reconciliation is recorded, later Christian art often presents a scene of peace between them, symbolized in an embrace before death.
Their joint feast day — June 29 — underscores the Church’s view of their united witness. Although the New Testament does not describe their deaths, both are believed to have been executed in Rome during Nero’s persecution, around the year 64 or 67 AD. Their martyrdom sealed Rome’s importance as a Christian center, and their legacy remains foundational for both Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
The plaque on Via Ostiense does not claim historical certainty. It offers, instead, a point of contact with tradition, and an invitation to pause. In a city where sacred and civic histories intersect on every block, this quiet marker suggests how memory, art, and devotion together shape the way we understand the past — and the people who lived it.
Pope Leo's reflection
Enjoy Pope Leo XIV's reflection on Peter and Paul during his first celebration of their feast day, here.
Part of what he said in that homily:
Dear friends, the history of Peter and Paul shows us that the communion to which the Lord calls us is a unison of voices and personalities that does not eliminate anyone’s freedom. Our patron saints followed different paths, had different ideas and at times argued with one another with evangelical frankness.
Yet this did not prevent them from living the concordia apostolorum, that is, a living communion in the Spirit, a fruitful harmony in diversity. As Saint Augustine remarks, “the feast of the two Apostles is celebrated on one day. They too were one. For although they were martyred on different days, they were one” (Serm. 295, 7.7).
