La basilica patriarcale di Aquileia: un grande monumento romanico del primo XI secolo

The Basilica at Aquileia is a prestigious monument, especially famous for its Late-Antique history and its exceptionally well-preserved Paleochristian mosaics. Above the excavations that enable the visitor to admire the well-known Late-Antique mosaics, stands an impressive building, in the shape of a basilica composed of three aisles and of a wide transept on which three apses were opened; the central one surmounts a crypt. Before the façade, the structure of a porch-corridor connects the basilica to a smaller two-level building that leads to a monumental baptistry. Isolated from the church, to the north, stands the splendid bell-tower. In this article the A. intends to throw new light on the importance of the building activity of the patriarch John IV, and to put the action at Aquileia of the patriarch Poppo within the context of the extraordinary building activity of the great Reformers, at the beginning of the 11th century. I believe, that the monument visible today is not only a simple variation in height of the structure built by Maxentius, but that it must be considered the result – nothwithstanding various but not substantial changes in the following centuries – of a unitary project, concerning basilica, crypt, western body, sculpture and mosaics, entirely assignable to the patriarchates of John and Poppo. The aim of this investigation is not to disclaim the existence of a phase of construction dating from the time of Maxentius, but to demonstrate that in the surviving monument there is nothing left of the Carolingian building, and that the spirit of the Basilica of Aquileia, as we see it today, does not correspond to Carolingian aesthetic canons, but rather to those of early Romanesque art. (Résumé auteur)