On the trail of Saint Luke: relics, DNA, and two thousand years of history.

In the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Padua sits an urn that, according to tradition, holds the remains of Saint Luke the Evangelist. Inside, amid a jumble of objects — and the unexpected presence of countless snake vertebrae — lies the headless skeleton of a man about 1.6 metres tall.
Could these really be the remains of Saint Luke? In 1998, the Bishop of Padua assembles an extraordinary commission of historians, chemists, philologists, archaeologists — and even a paleontologist, because of the snakes. The geneticist charged with analyzing the skeleton’s DNA is Guido Barbujani. Through his eyes, we follow an adventure spanning two thousand years of history, from Emperor Julian and the Crusades to the modern Middle East. The story reveals how experts from different disciplines piece together fragments of the distant past, highlighting both the power and the limits of scientific inquiry, the clashes of ideas, and the personal motivations that drive knowledge forward.