The Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Aquileia has been full of surprises. I came here not knowing a single thing about this place but it turns out to be a rich trove of historical treasures. The most prominent one are the Roman floor mosaics. Then there is the Crypt of the Frescoes which is a crypt painted with colorful and well preserved frescoes. It is most likely that the rest of the church looked like this just looking at the apse of the current basilica but not much made it to the present day. Finally there is that Crypt of the Excavations, while it isn’t a true crypt where they kept the dead, this is an excavation of prior Roman settlements which predate the basilica by hundreds of years.

On the way out of the basilica, I noticed that there was a structure which looked a little out of place. It looked like a small white pavilion but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me what it was. It was a replica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. There is a small room inside with a place where the body supposedly should be laid. It wasn’t anything remarkable. I haven’t seen the actual place but looking it up only, it doesn’t seem to be anything like the real thing or I just looked up the wrong thing. Either way, this replica is historical in its own right since there has been notes of its presence from almost a thousand years ago.

[xmlgm {https://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/BasilicadiSantaMariaAssuntaAquileia.kmz} zoom=19]