Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, St. Hermagoras and St. Fortunatus

Interesting facts

Some scholars believe the portrait medallions in the floor mosaic may depict Emperor Constantine and members of his family, including his mother Helena.

In the mosaic contest between a cock and a tortoise, the tortoise stands for evil, its Greek name being linked to Tartarus, the underworld.

A small column between the cock and the tortoise carries two barely visible symbols, an infinity sign and three Cs, read as references to the Trinity and the cross.

The sea monster swallowing Jonah is drawn as a pistrix, a fantastic beast of Greco-Roman mythology, and Jonah later rests beneath a gourd arbour.

When Attila's Huns sacked Aquileia in 452, the great north hall burned and was never rebuilt; flooring blackened by that fire can still be seen.

The first halls built under Bishop Theodore stood on earlier Roman buildings, probably large granaries, whose outer walls appear to have been reused.

Near the entrance stands an eleventh-century replica of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, once used in the liturgy of Holy Week.

The bell tower is said to have been inspired by the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and it became a model for many later bell towers.

The Torriani Chapel, founded in 1298, holds tombs of the Della Torre family, four of whose members served as patriarchs of Aquileia.

In the Crypt of the Frescoes, the painted lower band shows a duel between a Western knight and an Eastern horseman turning in the saddle to shoot.

Why it is worth it

The floor of the basilica at Aquileia is a sea. Across more than 760 square metres of the nave stretches a mosaic laid in the early fourth century, among the oldest and the largest surviving Christian floor mosaics in the West: fish and fishing boats, cherubs casting nets, the prophet Jonah swallowed and released by the sea monster, and Christ as the Good Shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders in the pose of the pagan god Mercury. Elsewhere a rooster squares up to a tortoise, an old allegory of light against darkness.

The first church here was raised by Bishop Theodore soon after the Edict of Milan of 313, when Christianity was granted toleration, as a pair of parallel halls joined by a transverse room and a baptistery; an inscription in the mosaic honours him. It was enlarged in the mid-fourth century, restored in the ninth by Patriarch Maxentius with the support of Charlemagne, and then, after an earthquake in 988, rebuilt by Patriarch Poppo in Romanesque form and consecrated on 13 July 1031. The frescoes in the apse date from his time: Poppo himself appears offering a model of the church to the Virgin, with Emperor Conrad II among the saints. Another earthquake in 1348 led to the pointed Gothic arches of the nave, and the wooden ceiling was added in 1526.

Beneath the presbytery, the Crypt of the Frescoes is painted from vault to column with Byzantine-style scenes of the lives of Christ and the Virgin and of Saints Mark and Hermagoras, the legendary founders of the church of Aquileia. Outside, a bell tower about 73 metres high, built under Poppo largely from stone blocks of the Roman amphitheatre, rises over the flat Friulian countryside. Behind the apse lies a small war cemetery where ten unknown soldiers of the First World War are buried, together with Maria Bergamas, the mother who chose the body of Italy's Unknown Soldier in 1921.

Aquileia itself was founded as a Roman colony in 181 BC and grew into one of the great cities of the empire and a centre of early Christianity, until Attila's Huns destroyed it in 452. The excavated Roman town and the basilica together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1998.

Getting there

The basilica is in the centre of the small town of Aquileia in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, about 13 km from Monfalcone. Trieste Airport (TRS), at Ronchi dei Legionari, is about 10 km away. The nearest railway station is Cervignano-Aquileia-Grado, a few kilometres north of the town.

Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, St. Hermagoras and St. Fortunatus

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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