Aquileia was one of the great cities of the Roman world, a gateway to the Alps and the East, until Attila's Huns destroyed it in 452. What survives is the floor. Beneath the medieval basilica lies one of the largest early-Christian mosaic pavements in the West, 4th-century, hundreds of square metres of it: fish, birds, the story of Jonah and the whale, portraits of donors, laid when Christianity was barely legal. Hidden under later floors and rediscovered only in the 20th century, it captures the moment a persecuted faith became a public one.
Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.
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