Cripta di Sant'Eusebio

Of one of Pavia's oldest churches, only the underground survives — and that underground is enough. The Crypt of Sant'Eusebio keeps the capitals, vaults and fresco fragments of a basilica probably founded in the sixth century, a rare standing trace of the city's early Christian and Lombard centuries beside the university.

Why it matters

The crypt is all that remains of a basilica whose foundation most likely dates to the sixth century, identified by tradition with the Arian cathedral of the time of King Rothari, remembered by Paul the Deacon in his History of the Lombards. It stands within the area many scholars associate with the faramannia, the presumed first Lombard settlement near the old royal palace. The dedication to Eusebius of Vercelli — the great opponent of Arianism — was adopted only once Anastasius, the last Arian bishop, had converted to Catholicism; in that choice the building itself becomes a document of the city's religious turning points. As a museum site of the Civic Museums, it links directly to the Sala Longobarda inside the Visconti Castle.

What to notice

The crypt is a single oratory-like chamber divided into five small naves by cross-vaulted bays on slender columns. The capitals are the chief attraction: carved with triangles and lanceolate leaves in incised work entirely unlike the classical capital repertoire, they are recognised by critics as spolia, quite possibly reused from the earlier Arian cathedral. On the vault webs survive Byzantinising frescoes dated to around the mid-twelfth century, portraying saints and evangelists, with fragments of a Madonna and Child still visible on the end wall — traces of a painting scheme that originally spread across the whole vaulting.

Context and history

The building was substantially reworked in the first half of the eleventh century, the phase to which the surviving crypt belongs. Deconsecrated in the nineteenth century, the basilica was finally demolished in 1923 to make way for the new Post Office palace; only the crypt was spared, and even it stayed buried until excavation and restoration in 1967–68 brought it back to light. Its management by the Civic Museums places this early Christian survivor inside the same institutional itinerary as the Longobard collections across town.