A carved block of limestone lay in the main hall of a first-century synagogue on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee until the year of its excavation, 2009. It is carved on every face, and on the front, beneath two arches held up by pillars, stands the seven-branched menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem — the earliest known carved depiction of the Temple menorah from a Jewish public building, cut in the decades before the Temple's fall, most probably by a craftsman who had seen the original with his own eyes.
The town around the synagogue lived from the lake. Hebrew Migdal and Aramaic Magdala both mean "tower"; the Greek world knew the place as Tarichaea, the fish-salting town, and the Talmud as Magdala Nunayya, the tower of the fishes. Josephus counted a fleet of some two hundred and thirty boats on this water at the outbreak of the revolt, and the salted fish of the lake reached markets as far away as Rome. For Christian pilgrims the name carries a person before it carries a town: Mary of Magdala, the disciple the Gospels set at the cross and at the empty tomb, honoured from the sixth century as a daughter of this place.
Between Tiberias and Capernaum, one institution now holds the excavated town. The Magdala Center — archaeological park, first-century synagogue and the church of Duc in Altum under one administration, a work of the Legion of Christ whose cornerstone was laid by Pope Benedict XVI — and, beside it, the Magdala Hotel. Pilgrims come to stand on a synagogue floor of the years of the ministry, to read the stone carved with the Temple's own menorah, and to pray in a church whose altar rides the horizon of the lake.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
Magdala rose on the shore at the foot of Mount Arbel, where the ancient Via Maris touched the lake between the coast road and the road to Damascus. Settlers founded it in the Hellenistic period, and by the first century it was a Jewish town of the Galilee — a harbor, salting works, dyers' workshops, and the trade road at its door. In 54 BCE the Roman commander Cassius took the town and, by Josephus's account, sold thirty thousand of its people into slavery. A century later the town stood on the losing side of the Jewish revolt: fortified by Josephus at the opening of the war in 66 CE, stormed by Vespasian's forces in 67 CE, its defenders killed or enslaved after a battle on the water that Josephus describes turning the lake red with the dead. The settlement survived the defeat on a smaller scale, a little to the north, into the Byzantine era.
In the Byzantine centuries the town was a Christian landmark. A large monastery stood here, and a church on the ground revered as the house of Mary Magdalene — recognition of Magdala as her birthplace enters Christian writing in the sixth century, and later sources describe the church on the reputed site of her house, where Jesus is said to have delivered her from seven demons. The monastery was destroyed in the seventh century and rebuilt by the Crusaders; under the Mamluks its church was put to use as a stable. The Franciscan archaeologist Virgilio Corbo excavated the monastic remains in the 1970s; today they lie in a private walled enclosure south of the park, closed to visitors.
For centuries the mound also carried a village. From Ottoman times a small Muslim village, al-Majdal, stood over the ancient site — a cluster of mud and stone houses that nineteenth-century travellers on the Tiberias road described in the dryest terms they had; Edward Robinson, passing in 1838, was the first to recognize the New Testament's Magdala in the poor village by the lake, and even Mark Twain, thirty years later, recorded a place he found ugly, cramped and uncomfortable. In April 1948, in the days after the fall of Tiberias, the people of al-Majdal left the village and it was razed — the sources of the period describe the departure differently, and nothing was left standing above ground but a single domed tomb. The levelling damaged the ancient remains beneath the village houses as well.
The ground then lay quiet until Fr. Juan María Solana, a priest of the Legion of Christ charged with building a pilgrim guesthouse on the shore, bought land above the ancient town in the 2000s. Israeli law required a salvage excavation before any construction, and in 2009 the spades found the synagogue. The cornerstone of the new center had been laid that same spring by Pope Benedict XVI; the building plans were redrawn around what had been found, and the archaeological park became the heart of the project. The church of Duc in Altum was consecrated on 28 May 2014 by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, its tabernacle blessed by Pope Francis in the same month. The Magdala Hotel opened beside the park in 2020, and in December 2021 a second first-century synagogue came to light in roadworks across the highway — the first time two synagogues of the Second Temple period have been found in a single town.
The Gospels give Mary Magdalene her record. Luke names her among the women Jesus had healed — she was the one delivered from seven demons — and among the women who accompanied him and supported the ministry from their own resources; all four Gospels set her at the crucifixion, and John's Gospel gives her the first meeting with the risen Christ, sent to tell the apostles themselves. The Eastern Church honoured her from early centuries as a myrrhbearer, equal to the apostles. In the West a sermon of Pope Gregory I in 591 identified her with the unnamed penitent woman of Luke's Gospel, and the identification held until the Roman calendar corrected it in 1969. Pope Francis raised her memorial to the rank of a feast in 2016 — the Church's own answer to the question of who she was: the first witness of the Resurrection, the apostle to the apostles.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Magdala
Magdala Center
מגדלא
The excavated town, the synagogue and the church are held together in one park on the shore, run by the Legion of Christ in the service of pilgrimage. The park is open to visitors daily, and admission is charged; the current opening times and prices are listed on the official site.
The first-century synagogue
The main hall measures about a hundred and twenty square metres: a mosaic floor with a large rosette, walls that preserve frescoes in dark red, mustard yellow and blue, stone benches around the walls, and a vestibule at the west end with a bench of its own and a side room that may have stored the scrolls. At its discovery it was the first synagogue of the Second Temple period to be found anywhere in the Galilee, and one of only a handful known in the country. The Gospels record that Jesus taught in the synagogues throughout Galilee, and pilgrimage tradition honours this hall as a place where he may have stood and spoken; the excavation establishes the building and its years, and the years are those of the ministry.
The Magdala Stone
In the main hall lay the carved block that has made the site known far beyond the lake. On the front, under the two arches, the seven-branched menorah flanked by amphorae; on the long sides, four arches, three of them filled with sheaves of grain and the fourth with a hanging object read as an oil lamp; on the back, an arcade of pillars and two wheel-like rosettes that some scholars read as the divine chariot of Ezekiel's vision; on the top, a six-petalled rosette between palms. The reading that has gathered the most weight among the scholars who have published on it sees the block as a miniature of the Temple — Holy of Holies, veil, showbread, the chariot of the glory — so that a congregation on the lake could set the Temple before its eyes without the long road to Jerusalem. Most likely the block carried the Torah scroll at the reading. After its discovery the stone spent years in the care of the Israel Antiquities Authority and was exhibited in New York and Rome; a copy stands in the hall where it was found.
The ancient town and harbor
Streets paved in basalt run between the foundations of rough-stone houses; a market quarter stands by the shore. Four ritual baths have been found, three of them interconnected and fed by spring water seeping through unplastered walls — the water the Law requires for immersion, living water, in baths of a construction found here for the first time in Israel. The ancient harbor now lies below the waterline, its stone breakwater curving under the surface; in the drought summer of 1991 the basalt base of a row of pillars rose above the water 46 metres offshore — the foundation, perhaps, of a lighthouse for the lake fleet. Coins, net weights and fish hooks from the dig are the small change of the fish-salting town the harbor served.
Duc in Altum
The church takes its name from the command of Luke 5:4 — Duc in altum, put out into deep water — and it is built to hold the shore rather than close it. The Women's Atrium is an octagonal hall with a baptistery at its centre and eight columns: seven engraved with named women of the Gospels, Mary Magdalene among them, and one deliberately left unmarked, for the women of faith whom no record carries. Four chapels around the atrium hold mosaics of the lakeshore scenes of the Gospels — the deliverance of Mary Magdalene, Jesus walking on the water with Peter, the raising of Jairus's daughter, the calling of the first apostles. The main chapel's altar is shaped as a first-century boat set before a wall of glass that opens onto the lake, with water beyond it, so that the altar seems to float on the Sea of Galilee; the tabernacle was blessed by Pope Francis in May 2014. On the lower level, the Encounter Chapel is an ecumenical space floored with the stones of the first-century marketplace, relaid where they were excavated, its mural showing the healing of the woman with the flow of blood.
The second synagogue
In December 2021, in roadworks beside Route 90 across the highway from the park, archaeologists found a second synagogue of the Second Temple period — a square hall of basalt and limestone with a plastered bench along one wall and a small side room whose stone shelf may have held the scrolls. It is the first time two synagogues of that era have come to light in a single settlement. The building lies outside the archaeological park and is not open to visitors.
Maqam of Sheikh Muhammad ar-Raslan
The one structure of the village of al-Majdal that survived 1948 stands beside Route 90 near the Migdal junction: a small square stone building with a dome painted green in recent years, sheltering the cenotaph of a Muslim sheikh. In the village's last years it was one of two shrines here; the other, the tomb of Sheikh Muhammad al-'Ajami at the village's northern edge toward the mouth of Wadi al-Hammam, has disappeared since the village fell. The domed tomb is the last landmark of the village layer of Magdala.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of St Mary Magdalene — July 22
The town's own saint keeps her universal feast on 22 July, raised by Pope Francis in 2016 from a memorial to a feast in honour of the first witness of the Resurrection — the woman the tradition of the Church names the apostle to the apostles. In the days leading to the feast, the center prays an online novena, Nine Days with Mary Magdalene, led from the chapel at Duc in Altum.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Magdala Hotel (hotel) — Beside the archaeological park, its lobby and gardens opening onto the excavated remains; a hundred and sixty rooms, a restaurant serving the produce of the Galilee, and retreat spaces for groups. It is the pilgrim guesthouse the project began with. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Gomeh by Isrotel Collection (hotel) — Two hundred and twelve rooms on the western shore at Migdal Beach, a few minutes north by car, with a heated pool, a restaurant and halls for groups; the beach beside it is not a supervised bathing beach. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
More hotels in Magdala on Booking.com →
Accommodation available to book near Magdala. Pilgrim houses and religious guesthouses are listed above — many take bookings directly and do not appear on booking sites.
🚗 Getting There
By Air: Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) at Tel Aviv is the working gateway for the whole country, roughly 140 km south-west; the drive to the lake takes about an hour and a half. Haifa's small airport takes a limited range of regional flights.
By Train: No railway reaches the Sea of Galilee. The one rail connection runs to Bet She'an, with a bus onward to Tiberias; most pilgrims simply continue from the airport by road.
By Bus: Local and regional lines stop at the Migdal junction on Route 90, a few minutes' walk from the site, with connections to and from Tiberias central bus station and the towns north of the lake; long-distance coaches link Tel Aviv with Tiberias in about two hours. Organized day tours out of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem call at Magdala as a standard stop.
By Car: Route 90 runs the western shore from Tiberias to the north of the lake; the site lies about 5 km north of Tiberias, turning at the Migdal junction toward the shore. Navigation apps take מגדלא (Magdala) or מלון מגדלה (the hotel) as the destination.
On Foot: The Kinneret Shore Trail, the walking circuit of the lake, passes the site. From the parking between the Dekel and Green beaches, about 4.5 km north of Tiberias on Route 90, an easy shore walk of some 3.5 km runs past springs and a Russian church compound to the park.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Richard Bauckham, ed. Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period — The scholarly harvest of the excavations: harbor, ritual baths, the synagogue and its stone, the fishing industry and Josephus's account of the town. For the reader who wants the archaeology at full depth.
Jane Schaberg. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament — A critical study of the legends that grew around the Magdalene from the Gospels onward. Scholarly in register rather than devotional.
Fr. Charles K. Samson. Come and See: A Catholic Guide to the Holy Land — A Catholic pilgrim's companion to the sites, with the Galilee chapters covering this ground.
🎥 Recommended Videos
Magdala Stone in Israel's Galilee an 'Oasis of Encounter' with Christian, Jewish History — A short CBN News report on the carved stone and the crossroads of Jewish and Christian history the site has proved to be.
🔗 Useful Links
Magdala — The official site of the center: opening times, admission and the novena.
Duc in Altum — The church's own page, with the story of its building and its chapels.
Magdala media — The center's video series and virtual pilgrimages through the places of the Holy Land.
Magdala Hotel — The hotel beside the park, with the guesthouse arrangements for groups.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Tabgha (6 km north-east) — The shore of the multiplication of the loaves and the primacy of Peter.
Capernaum (8 km north-east) — The town of Peter's house and the white limestone synagogue, the base of Jesus's Galilean ministry.
Mount of Beatitudes — The hill of the Sermon on the Mount above the north-western shore, included with Magdala on the standard day tours of the lake.
Yigal Allon Museum, Kibbutz Ginosar — the "Jesus Boat" — In the drought winter of 1986 two fishermen of the kibbutz found the buried hull of a first-century fishing boat in the shallows a short drive north along the shore; after years of conservation it stands in the museum at Ginosar. Radiocarbon puts the wood in the decades around the ministry, and nothing ties this particular boat to Jesus or his disciples — but it is the type of boat the Gospels mention some fifty times, from this same water and these same years.
Mount Tabor (19 km south-west) — The mountain of the Transfiguration.
Cana (19 km south-west) — The village of the marriage feast and the wedding church.
Nazareth (25 km south-west) — The town of the Annunciation and the basilica over the house of Mary.
Sepphoris (23 km south-west) — The Roman city of the Galilee, traditionally the home of Saints Joachim and Anne.
Haifa — Mount Carmel (51 km west) — The Carmelite mountain, with the Stella Maris monastery and the cave of Elijah.
Tiberias (5 km south) — The Roman-era city whose rise displaced ancient Magdala; today the practical base of the lake, with the buses and the wider choice of hotels.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch."
— Jesus to Simon Peter, Luke 5:4 — the verse that gave the church at Magdala its name
The command was first given to fishermen on this water. The stones the dig has given back — the synagogue floor, the marketplace paving relaid in the chapel, the harbor beneath the waterline — are the fabric of the town the fishermen knew, and the altar of the church above them rides the horizon of the lake from which they put out.
