Basilica paleocristiana di San Vigilio

Beneath the chancel of Trento Cathedral lies the excavated shell of the city's first great church. Built around the close of the fourth century over the graves of martyrs and of St Vigilius himself, the basilica preserves tombs, mosaics and sculpted screens from seven centuries of worship.

Why it matters

This is the point where Trento became a Christian city. The municipality's heritage page records a building of considerable size erected towards the end of the fourth century AD, deliberately sited outside the Roman city walls. Its origin lies in the burial of the martyrs Sisinio, Martirio and Alessandro, killed in Val di Non on 29 May 397; a few years later Vigilio, third bishop and patron of Trento, was laid to rest beside them. For centuries his remains stayed here, and the complex served as the city's cathedral between the ninth and tenth centuries, when the bishop's palace moved beside it, before the present Duomo replaced it. The remains connect the medieval cathedral above with the city's late-antique history.

What to notice

The hall centres on the patron's grave. At its centre stands the arca di San Vigilio, an eleventh- to twelfth-century funerary monument that once enclosed the saint's remains. Around it, floor tombs converge towards that focal point, and near the presbyterial enclosure you can still pick out mosaic decoration and fragments of sculpted plutei, the low screens that divided the early medieval choir. A much later slab commemorates prince-bishop Udalrico Frundsberg, who died in 1493. Interpretation by the Museo Diocesano Tridentino includes bilingual panels, videos, multimedia stations and virtual-reality reconstructions of the vanished upper structure.

Context and history

The building's phases stack like a cross-section of Trento's church history. Conceived as a cemetery basilica with a mainly commemorative role, it gained two side chapels in the ninth century; in the eleventh the hall was divided into three naves, a crypt was dug and the presbyterial zone raised. Bishop Altemanno completed the last works and reconsecrated the church on 18 November 1145. When the Romanesque cathedral rose above it in the thirteenth century, the old basilica was sealed and forgotten until excavations conducted from 1964 to 1977 brought it back to light. Its excavation and display, curated by the Diocesan Museum, revealed an early Christian complex of remarkable completeness.