The experience

It is encountered on the road leading to the sea, Aquileia.
The road to Grado, that ancient Via Giulia Augusta that even from afar carries the scent of the sea. Aquileia has very ancient origins.
At the place where, as early as protohistoric times, northern amber was traded, exchanging it for items arriving by sea from the Mediterranean and ports of call in the Near East, the Romans, in 181 B.C., founded a colony under Latin law.
From the beginning of the Roman Empire, the city assumed great strategic, economic and cultural importance for a vast territory-the Venetia et Histria-of which it was the main reference for centuries. It reached its peak under the empire of Caesar Augustus: with a stable population of over 200,000 it became one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the entire empire. Famous for its harbor and walls, it became a backwater fortress with strategic functions as part of the fortifications along the Alps to block eastern access to barbarians from trans-Danubian territories. Since the 3rd cent. Aquileia was also a bishopric.

From the 6th cent. the presuli qualified as patriarchs with supremacy over other bishoprics, and from 1077 they had the contention of Friuli with ducal prerogatives from the Germanic emperor. The temporal power of the patriarchs of Aquileia continued until the Venetian conquest of Friuli in 1420.
The present archaeological area, considered by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site, is of exceptional importance and allows visitors to admire the remains of the Roman forum and a basilica, the burial ground, mosaic floors and house foundations, statues, the Via Sacra, markets, walls, the river port with the mighty blocks of the docking docks, a large mausoleum, and much more.
The splendid Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption, erected on a fourth-century building, still preserves, the architectural lines of the rebuilding carried out, in 1031, by Patriarch Popone, who also had the mighty 73-meter-high bell tower built.

Also of interest is the so-called Holy Sepulcher, built in the 12th century in imitation of the one in Jerusalem. Also important for learning about the history of Christian Aquileia in the early centuries is the Excavation Crypt with the beautiful mosaics of the church built in the 4th century by Bishop Theodore on the structures of an ancient Roman villa.

Just a stone’s throw from Grado, then, it is possible to immerse oneself in the vast sea of Roman and early Christian art of Aquileia, be fascinated by ancient grandeur, and, on the wings of an eagle, fly through history.