AQUILEIA

PATRIMONIO DELL'UMANITÀ

sabato 23 novembre 2024

Early Christian Basilica

Basilica paleocristiana presso il Museo Paleocristiano ad Aquileia | Foto: © Gianluca Baronchelli

Built between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century AD, the Early Christian Basilica was characterized by a single nave building, walls still preserved in height and a refined mosaic floor. The presbytery, the space reserved for the clergy, was enclosed by balustrades, crowned by a shallow polygonal apse, enclosed within a rectangular environment linked to religious needs. The church had to suffer extensive damage during the capture of Attila, which took place on July 18, 452. Three naves were obtained with some pillars and a new mosaic floor was laid. Few sections of this floor survive, some of which are highlighted behind the apse, decorated with geometric motifs and the inscriptions of the benefactors who financed the work. When the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria was suppressed in 1782, the memory of the original early Christian basilica was lost, until its floor mosaics were accidentally discovered at the end of the nineteenth century to be completely brought to light in the fifties of the twentieth century.