Aquileia
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Archaeological Area And The Patriarchal Basilica Of Aquileia, Inscribed 1998), With An Early Fourth Century Floor Mosaic Of About 750 Square Metres · Aquileia, Friuli Venezia Giulia
Aquileia was one of the largest cities of the Roman empire, a port and a frontier capital of perhaps a hundred thousand people, and then Attila destroyed it and the sea moved away and it became a village of three thousand in a field. What survives is the thing nobody expects: under the floor of the basilica lies a mosaic pavement of the early fourth century covering something like seven hundred and fifty square metres, the largest early Christian floor mosaic in the western world, preserved because a later church was built directly on top of it and forgot it was there until 1909. You walk over it on raised glass, looking down at fish, birds, a fishing scene with putti, a tortoise fighting a cockerel and portraits of the donors who paid for each section. Outside, the forum, the river port and the streets of the Roman city lie half excavated in open fields with no fence and almost nobody in them.
Piazza Capitolo, Aquileia, Friuli Venezia Giulia, 33051, Italy
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the basilica opens daily with the mosaic walkways accessible on a ticket, a midday interval in some seasons, shorter winter hours, and CLOSURE TO VISITORS DURING SERVICES. The crypts and the bell tower keep the same or shorter hours and the tower shuts in bad weather. The archaeological museum closes one day a week and is on the state free first Sunday scheme. The forum, the streets and the river port are open fields with no hours at all.