The Scala Santa (Holy Stairs), Rome

The Story

Across the piazza from the Basilica of St. John Lateran stands a plain-fronted building that holds one of Rome's most physical devotions. Inside, twenty-eight marble steps rise straight ahead. Pilgrims do not walk up them. They kneel at the bottom and climb one step at a time, praying as they go, while four ordinary staircases on either side carry everyone else up and down.

The tradition, recorded from the medieval period onward, is that these are the steps of the praetorium in Jerusalem, climbed by Jesus on the day he was condemned, and that St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, had them brought to Rome around AD 326. That origin cannot be verified historically, and honest guides say so. What is certain is that the stairs have drawn pilgrims for roughly a thousand years. In 1589 Pope Sixtus V had them moved to their present position, with Domenico Fontana designing the building that frames them.

At the top is the Sancta Sanctorum, the private chapel of the medieval popes, rebuilt under Nicholas III with Cosmatesque floors and thirteenth-century frescoes. Its inscription reads that there is no holier place in all the world. It guards the Acheropita, an ancient image of Christ described as not made by human hands, and a celebrated collection of relics beneath its altar.

Since 1723 the marble has been protected by a walnut casing, so most pilgrims kneel on wood rather than stone. Between April and July 2019 that casing was lifted for a restoration by Vatican Museums conservators, and for the first time in almost three hundred years visitors saw the bare marble -- worn into hollows by centuries of knees, with rosaries, holy cards and photographs found tucked underneath. The wood was then replaced to protect the stone.

Church Recognition

The Church has never issued a historical ruling that these are certainly the steps of Pilate's praetorium; the identification rests on ancient tradition rather than documentary proof, and Catholic sources generally present it that way. What the Church has done is give the devotion its full official support. The site is a Pontifical Sanctuary on extraterritorial property of the Holy See, and since 1854, at the direction of Pope Pius IX, it has been in the care of the Passionists, whose particular charism is keeping the memory of Christ's Passion alive.

Popes have attached indulgences to the climb: Pius VII granted one in 1817, and a plenary indulgence is available to the faithful who ascend the stairs on their knees while meditating on the Passion, under the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Holy Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father. A stair lift has been fitted to one of the side staircases so that people who cannot kneel or climb can still make the pilgrimage and receive the indulgence.

Catholic Teaching

The Scala Santa is a school in two Catholic doctrines at once. The first is the veneration of relics: the Church honors objects connected to Christ and the saints not as magic but as physical anchors of a real history, because the faith rests on things that happened in time and place to a God who took flesh. The second is the meaning of penance. Climbing on one's knees is a prayer made with the body, joining a small deliberate discomfort to the sufferings of Christ -- what St. Paul calls filling up in our flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his Body, the Church. The indulgence attached to the climb expresses the Church's teaching on the communion of saints: the merits of Christ and the saints are a treasury the Church can apply to the healing of temporal punishment for sin already forgiven.

Go Deeper

The sanctuary is run by the Passionists, whose vocation is preaching the Passion of Christ; their site is scala-santa.com.

The Scala Santa sits within a few minutes' walk of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome and the mother church of the world, and the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which holds relics of the Passion brought to Rome by St. Helena. The three make a natural half-day of Passion devotion.