Area funeraria fuori Porta Decumana

Roman law kept the dead outside the walls, and outside Aosta's Porta Decumana the rule left a trace that archaeologists still read today. Beyond the western gate of Augusta Praetoria, along the road that led towards Gaul, this necropolis preserves the burials of the Roman city and explains a side of ancient urban life that monuments alone never show.

Why it matters

A Roman colony was defined as much by its boundaries for the dead as for the living. Extramural burial grounds lined the roads out of every Roman city, and the cemetery beyond the Porta Decumana was Augusta Praetoria's western gateway necropolis. Excavation has revealed two walled funerary fields holding burials of many types, and the site is presented by the regional heritage service as part of the circuit of archaeological sites managed together with the MAR museum. The necropolis fills in the human geography of Roman Aosta: where the citizens who built the walls, the theatre and the arch were themselves laid to rest.

What to notice

The interest of a necropolis lies in its arrangement rather than a single object. Two funerary fields enclosed by low walls line the road corridor outside the gate, following the Roman custom of family plots flanking the highway. The oldest graves hold cremations deposited in pits, tile cists, small urn-shaped containers or little chambers, while inhumation burials appear from the second century AD and gradually become the norm. In the late fourth century the ground was deliberately reorganized: existing tombs were cleared away to raise three mausolea — cellae memoriae tied to the cult of the dead — and a paleochristian basilica rose a short distance away, showing the area's long passage from Roman burial ground to Christian memory site. Many of the finds associated with Aosta's Roman necropoleis — grave goods, inscriptions, urns — are displayed a short distance away in the Regional Archaeological Museum, linking the burial grounds with the finds displayed at the museum.

Context and history

Augusta Praetoria was founded in 25 BC, and its cemeteries grew along the roads beyond each of the four gates. The ground beyond the Porta Decumana served the city's western outskirts: the public road that left by the gate climbed towards the Little St Bernard pass and Gaul, and the people of the colony buried their dead along its margins for centuries, from the cremation rites of the early settlement to the inhumations of the later empire. The area is now protected and presented by the Autonomous Region of Valle d'Aosta, which groups it with the MAR, the cryptoporticus, San Lorenzo and other sites in a single managed circuit.