With a well-groomed beard and a laurel wreath around his head, the Emperor Diocletian shines on the surface of a precious gold coin kept in the Archaeological Museum.

It was precisely the ruler of Dalmatian origin who established the mint of Aquileia: starting from 295 AD. three workshops were active in the city, the symbol of which was marked on the reverse of each coin. The specimen we are talking about, however, dates back to about ten years earlier and comes from the capital, linked to Aquileia by a continuous traffic of goods and people.

This is just one example of the thousands of ancient coins preserved in the Archaeological Museum, all found in the Aquileia area: from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages, history is told through bronze, gold and silver specimens dating from the 4th century BC.