Scala Santa, Rome

Scala Santa is the Holy See’s sanctuary beside Saint John Lateran, incorporating a remnant of the old papal palace. The stairway before you has twenty-eight marble steps beneath a protective wooden skin. Its ascent reaches the Sancta Sanctorum, once the private chapel of the early popes.

For Catholic pilgrims, this is a devotional route, not an ordinary stair. The sacred steps are climbed only on knees, while companion stairways allow regular access. According to medieval Christian tradition, Jesus used these steps on the way to Pilate’s interrogation before the Crucifixion.

The same tradition holds that Helena, Constantine’s mother, brought them from Jerusalem to Rome in the year three hundred and twenty-six. Pope Sixtus the Fifth moved the staircase here in fifteen eighty-nine, placing the marble from the upper end downward so builders would not tread upon it. Notice the worn, enclosed run: its wooden protection reflects centuries of kneeling pilgrims.

The marble emerged briefly after restoration during twenty nineteen, then the covering returned. This compact sanctuary gathers papal memory, Passion devotion, and a very physical act of pilgrimage into a single ascent.