Sepolcreto Paleocristiano

Outside Aquileia's Roman walls, five walled family burial enclosures line a road that once led out of the city. The necropolis preserves first-century tombs and late-antique sarcophagi, revealing how the ancient city commemorated its dead.

Why it matters

Roman burial grounds were placed outside settlements, and Aquileia's cemetery belonged to a belt of sepulchral roads beyond the city. The remains include funerary monuments outside the late Roman walls, whose course has been traced by excavation. The enclosures offer evidence of how family burial plots were arranged beside a road beyond the urban centre.

What to notice

The five walled plots have equal depth but vary in length. They belonged to the Stazia, Giulia, Trebia and Cestia families, as well as to an unidentified household. In the fourth enclosure, late-antique sarcophagi are displayed on brick pilasters at the height where they were found, preserving something of their original arrangement. The brick and stone plot walls show how burial spaces were enclosed and organised.

Context and history

The burial ground came into use in the first century CE. The fourth enclosure remained in use into the fourth or fifth century, extending the site's history into the early Christian period. Excavations in 1940 and 1941 revealed monuments and tombs that established the known extent of the cemetery. Its position outside the late Roman defensive circuit connects it to the wider landscape of walls, roads and port that shaped Aquileia's final centuries as a Roman city.