Guide
St Pierre is a natural cave on Habib-i Neccar Mountain in Antakya that was turned into a church. The tradition the ministry sets out is that Peter, one of the twelve apostles, came to Antioch to preach, made this cave his church and held the first meetings here, and that it was here that the community of believers was first called Christian.
That makes it a place of pilgrimage rather than only a monument, and the practical consequence is a date: Catholics hold a service here every year on 29 June.
Of the fabric, the parts worth looking for are the mosaics in the floor of the side aisles, of the 4th and 5th centuries AD and partly destroyed. In the 11th and 12th centuries columns and arches were added to the cave, turning it into a three-aisled church.
About ten minutes' walk east of the church, reached by a footpath, is a second thing entirely: a relief of Charon, the ferryman of the dead, who in Greek myth carried souls across the Styx to the underworld. It is a bust, veiled, and reads as an unfinished portrait. The ministry's account is that it was cut into the rock at the point of the mountain that commands the city in the 2nd century BC, to protect the people against an outbreak of plague and prevent further deaths.
