At St. Peter in Gallicantu on Mt. Zion, there are 1st-century ruins, but Christians did not build a church here till the 6th. The first literary reference stems from an 8th-century monk (a later Epiphanius): "To the right, outside the city and near the wall, is a church, where Peter, when he went out, bitterly wept."

1. Whether or not this was the site of Caiaphas' house, the place certainly helps one to get the feeling of what it must have been like to be imprisoned overnight. Beneath the church are two intriguing chambers hewn into bedrock. The larger one may have been a storeroom: some of the holes in the stones could have been for hanging sacks of grain. Yet they could also have been for chaining prisoners. On the south side of this room is a narrow aisle with a single step, on which a guard could stand to look through a small window into a deeper chamber, where a prisoner might be kept. Today we enter this deeper chamber through a recent breach. Standing in it and looking up, we see a hole that resembles the opening of a cistern. It has three crosses from the Byzantine period engraved in its sides. To the east, above, is a divided staircase: no doubt it reached the bottom of the chamber at a time when the floor was higher. Perhaps this was a Jewish ritual bath in the era of the Second Temple. It could have been deepened to form a high-security cell. A reddish image on the south wall recalls Jesus crucified. In memory of the night he spent under arrest, we may here read Psalm 88.   

2. Outside the church, a few yards to the north, is an ancient stepped street that came up from the site of the Pool of Siloam. It may have been here at the time of Jesus' trial.