In her itinerary of the Holy Land, after describing the Church of the Loaves and Fishes, the pilgrim Egeria (c. 381 CE) writes, "Near there on a mountain is the cave to which the Savior climbed and spoke the Beatitudes."

[2] The church is Neo-Byzantine in style with a marble veneer casing the lower interior walls and gold mosaic in the dome.

Around the altar are mosaic symbols on the pavement representing Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor describes the selection of the site thus: "It was perhaps inevitable that this well-watered area with its shade trees on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Byzantine pilgrims ate their picnics, should have been identified as the location of two episodes involving the consumption of food, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and the conferral on Peter of the responsibility of leadership after a fish breakfast.

(The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700, p. 277) Regardless of whether this is the very spot, the Church of the Beatitudes stands in the general area and in a very similar setting to where Jesus would have stood as he delivered his famous sermon.