JERUSALEM, Israel (LifeSiteNews) — Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of an ancient garden and burial ground beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a discovery that matches key details of the Gospel account of Jesus’ burial.
A team of archaeologists working beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem identified evidence of an ancient landscape of vines, olive trees, and rock-cut tombs, according to research published after years of excavations. The findings come from works conducted inside the present basilica between May and November 2022, with subsequent investigations and analysis continuing through 2025.
“We found evidence of a funerary landscape, alongside small areas planted with vines and olive trees, as well as a pastoral area characterized by sporadic human activity,” lead archaeologist Francesca Romana Stasolla told the Daily Mail.
The 98-page 2025 preliminary report, published in Liber Annuus of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, presents the results of the final excavation campaign.
The newly published findings closely resemble the burial setting described by St. John, whose Gospel situates the place where Jesus was crucified near to a garden and that a new tomb was located there.
“Now there was in the place where he was crucified, a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein no man yet had been laid. There, therefore, because of the parasceve of the Jews, they laid Jesus, because the sepulchre was nigh at hand,” John 19:41-42 reads.
The excavations do not, however, identify any particular tomb as the tomb of Jesus. Rather, they provide archaeological evidence about the character of the area before the construction of the Christian sanctuary and show that burial places and cultivated land existed together at the site.
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The archaeological research was conducted by a team from Rome’s Sapienza University under Stasolla’s direction. Excavations inside the present-day Church of the Holy Sepulchre took place from May to November 2022 as part of a project connected with the restoration of the church floor. The work was carried out with the cooperation of the communities responsible for the basilica, including the Orthodox Patriarchate, the Custody of the Holy Land, and the Armenian Patriarchate.
The excavated areas included portions of the church’s north aisle and the northern part of its rotunda. Researchers examined the archaeological layers according to their chronological development, allowing them to reconstruct successive phases in the history of the site.
Notably, the team discovered grapevine wood in one of the excavated locations. The researchers say this permits a cautious suggestion that grapevines may have been cultivated directly at the site. Pollen analysis also indicated the possibility that olive trees were grown there.