My dissertation examines the pictorial, material, and liturgical strategies employed in early Christian baptisteries of the Mediterranean (fourth to sixth centuries) to create visions of paradise. These visions not only transformed baptismal initiates into new Adams and Eves reenacting the fall of humanity upon an edenic stage, but they also facilitated the transformation of the carnal senses into spiritual perception, deemed necessary for physical bodies occupying a liminal space that was thought to unify terrestrial and celestial realities. I examine the development and transmission of paradisiacal motifs in the baptisteries of Italy, North Africa, and the southwestern Balkans, pairing them with contemporary theories of performative space and medieval discourse on sensory perception.