
The Ecce Homo Arch has a connection to St Paul. After Paul was seized by Jews while visiting the Temple, it was from the Antonia fortress that soldiers ran to rescue him and prevent a riot. And it was on the steps leading to the fortress that Paul addressed the crowd and avoided being flogged by announcing to a surprised tribune that he was a Roman citizen. Map.

Thousands of pilgrims each year walk under the Ecce Homo Arch near the beginning of the Via Dolorosa without realizing that extensive remains of first-century Jerusalem lie beneath their feet. For centuries Christians believed the arch was the place where Pontius Pilate displayed Jesus — beaten, crowned with thorns and clothed in a purple robe — to a hostile Jerusalem crowd with the words: “Behold the man” (“Ecce Homo” in Latin).
Archaeologists claim that the arch stood on a great plaza constructed by the emperor Hadrian when he rebuilt the city in AD 135. This is a century after Jesus was crucified. Large sections of the plaza remain underneath the Via Dolorosa and adjacent buildings, accessible through the Ecce Homo convent of the Sisters of Zion.
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