Where was Paul imprisoned?

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Accepted Answer

Acts names four places: a night in the town prison of Philippi in Macedonia, about AD 49/50; the Roman barracks of the Antonia fortress in Jerusalem after his arrest in 57; two years in Herod's praetorium at Caesarea, 57–59; and two years under guard in a rented house in Rome, about 60–62. The map point stands on Caesarea, where he was held longest, 87 km from Jerusalem in a straight line. Paul himself says he had been “in prisons more frequent” before most of these, so there were others that Acts does not tell, and Second Timothy speaks of a last imprisonment in Rome. At Philippi the magistrates had Paul and Silas beaten and “cast them into prison”; the jailor “thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks”, until at midnight “there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken”. In Jerusalem the tribune had him “carried into the castle”, the Antonia at the north-west corner of the Temple Mount, and took him back there when the council nearly tore him apart. Then, under escort of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen, he was sent by night to Caesarea, where Felix “commanded him to be kept in Herod's judgment hall”, and “after two years” left him bound for his successor Festus. In Rome “Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him”, and “dwelt two whole years in his own hired house”. Philippi is about 1,415 km from Jerusalem, Caesarea about 2,235 km from Rome. Herod's palace at Caesarea, on the promontory beside the theatre, has been excavated and is usually taken for the praetorium where Paul was held. The letters written “in my bonds”, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon and Ephesians, are traditionally placed in Rome, but many scholars put them in Caesarea or in an imprisonment at Ephesus that Acts does not mention, where Paul says he “fought with beasts”; this is discussed in the question on where Paul wrote his letters. Clement of Rome, about AD 96, says Paul was in chains seven times. The Mamertine prison in the Forum is shown as the place of his last confinement only by a later tradition.