Produced jointly by the Jewish Museum in Rome and the Vatican Museum, a current exhibition displays images of, and artifacts related to, the menorah of the ancient Jerusalem temples, ranging from a Jewish engraving of the candelabrum from the 1st century BCE to a painting by Marc Chagall. The exhibit gives the lie to the persistent legend that the menorah, Ark of the Covenant, and other sacred objects from the temples are being held in the Vatican. Reviewing the exhibit, Fredric Brandfon describes one of the earliest versions of this legend:
As one enters the exhibit in the Jewish Museum, the first object on display is a cast of the Tabula Magna Lateranensis, an inscription in mosaic tiles housed in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano and visible today on the left of the entrance of the sacristy. The basilica is the cathedral of Rome where, until 1870, popes were crowned. The Tabula Magna is a 37-line Latin inscription from the time of Pope Nicholas IV (1288–1292) listing the treasure kept in the cathedral of Rome and in the nearby chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum. Among the treasures listed is the Temple menorah, which, the inscription says, is the one pictured on the Arch of Titus.
Despite this attestation that the menorah had been kept in Rome as a treasure as late as the mid-13th century CE, it is thoroughly unlikely that such was the case. The Tabula Magna also lists as the basilica’s treasures Christ’s cloak, John the Baptist’s raiment of camel’s hair, the Ark of the Covenant, and the two Tablets of the Law. The Tabula Magna is an artifact of a time obsessed with holy relics, and it testifies only to a legend concerning the menorah propagated for the glory of its surrounding basilica.
Read more on Bible History Daily: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/temple-at-jerusalem/rome-images-of-the-temple-menorah/