The Upper Room

The "large upper room, furnished and ready" (Mark 14:15; Luke 22:12) where Jesus shares the Last Supper with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. A second-floor guest room of a private house in Jerusalem, reached by an outside stair — the standard arrangement for hosting Passover meals in the crowded city at festival time.

Acts 1:13 places the disciples in the same upper room after the ascension, devoting themselves to prayer alongside Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers, and many readers identify it as the room where the Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). By the fourth century, Christian tradition had fixed on a site on Mount Zion just outside the old city wall — the room now known as the Cenacle.