You come across Aquileia on your way to the sea.

The road to Grado, that ancient Via Giulia Augusta that, even from a distance, carries the scent of the sea.
Aquileia has very ancient origins.

In the place where, in protohistoric times, amber from the North was traded, exchanging it for objects arriving by sea from the Mediterranean and ports of call in the Near East, the Romans, in 181 BC, founded a colony under Latin law.

From the beginning of the Roman Empire, the city assumed great strategic, economic and cultural importance for a vast territory – Venetia et Histria – of which it represented the main reference point for centuries.
It reached its peak under the empire of Caesar Augustus: with a stable population of over 200,000 it became one of the largest and richest cities in the entire empire.
Famous for its port and walls, it became a backwater fortress with strategic functions as part of the fortifications along the Alps, to block eastern access to the barbarians from the Transdanubian territories.
As early as the 3rd century.
Aquileia was also an episcopal seat.

From the 6th century onwards, the prelates qualified as patriarchs with supremacy over other bishoprics and from 1077 onwards they had the contention of Friuli with ducal prerogatives from the Germanic Emperor.
The temporal power of the patriarchs of Aquileia continued until the Venetian conquest of Friuli in 1420.

The present archaeological area, considered by Unesco to be a World Heritage Site, is of exceptional importance and allows us to admire the remains of the Roman forum and a basilica, the burial ground, mosaic floors and house foundations, statues, the Via Sacra, markets, walls, the river port with its mighty dock blocks, a large mausoleum and much more.

The magnificent Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption, erected on a 4th century building, still retains the architectural lines of the rebuilding carried out in 1031 by Patriarch Popone, who also had the mighty 73-metre high bell tower built.

Also of interest is the so-called Holy Sepulchre, built in the 12th century in imitation of the one in Jerusalem.
Another important place to learn about the history of Christian Aquileia in the early centuries is the Excavation Crypt with the beautiful mosaics of the church built in the 4th century by Bishop Theodore on the structures of an ancient Roman villa.

A few steps from Grado it is therefore possible to immerse into the vast sea of Roman and early Christian art of Aquileia, be fascinated by its ancient grandeur and, on the wings of an eagle, fly through history.