I was happy enough with my visit to the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Aquileia. While the old church didn’t have the jaw dropping designs that I have come to expect in European cathedrals, this is because it is so old that the original artwork has already deteriorated that large parts of the walls of the basilica are merely painted white now. Back in the day, it would have been painted all over with frescoes, similar to the crypt that I visited earlier. As I saw, while it might not be much of a looker now, the basilica makes up for it in historical significance. The floor is covered with mosaic common during the Roman era. However, it is not just the church floor that is impressive. There is more.

Another flight of stairs brings visitors underground once again. This is called the Crypt of Excavations. From the name, it sounds like this is just a name recently given this place. As the name implies, there are recent excavations done here which uncovered the ruins of older residences which were here centuries before the basilica was even built. Think about that. The church itself is a thousand years old and yet the basilica itself is built on top of even older structures. It just goes to show you that civilizations just build on top of each other. In this case, this is all the same Roman civilization and they lasted so long that they needed to build on top of an existing settlement.

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