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The Paleochristian Museum is a unique collection of late antique artifacts that tell the Christianity of the origins of the Upper Adriatic site. The finds are preserved in a real treasure chest: a majestic agricultural building built on the remains of an early Christian basilica of the fourth century.

The Museum was inaugurated in 1961, separating the testimonies of the primitive Christian community of Aquileia from the National Archaeological Museum, and was named after Franco Marinotti, patron who had contributed to the recovery of the building that houses it. It had arisen as an early Christian church, on the north-eastern outskirts of the city, to be transformed into a Benedictine monastery; from the end of the eighteenth century it passed into the property of several Aquileian families, to be used as a residence ("Palazzo"), home to the private collections of antiquities and finally for agricultural use.

The ground floor is almost entirely occupied by the mosaic floor with geometric design of the primitive basilica and by other mosaic fragments of late antique buildings in Aquileia, while on the first floor there are parts of the floor of the basilica of the Tullio alla Beligna Fund (excavated in the southern area of the city ancient).

On the second floor there are early Christian inscriptions, mostly funerary, some also decorated, which return a picture of the composite Aquileian society of the time (IV-V century AD); they are flanked by sculptural finds dating back to the early Middle Ages, partly already reused in the later stages of the building.

Timetable and tickets

Address

Piazza Pirano, 1
33051 Aquileia

Contacts

Discounts and prices’ reductions with the Artsupp Card

With the Artsupp Card you can get, for the first time, discounts and reduced entrance tickets for Italian museums .

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Other museums in Aquileia