The setting is unusually gentle: a shoreline of reeds and shallow water, a garden of palms and eucalyptus, and a low church built on the plan of the Byzantine basilica that stood here. Tabgha marks the place associated by tradition with the multiplication of the loaves and fish, and beneath the altar lies the rock on which the meal is said to have been set. What draws visitors above all is the mosaic pavement of the fifth-century church, preserved across the transept: a marsh landscape teeming with herons, ducks, lotus flowers and a tower gauge for water levels, and, before the altar, the celebrated basket of loaves flanked by two fish, one of the most reproduced images in early Christian art. Filmed in 4K, the programme covers the mosaics in detail and the lakeside setting that gives the site its calm.
