Sometimes it's easy to neglect the things closest to home. In almost 3 years of living in Italy, we still hadn't been to the Roman ruins at Aquileia, only an hour away! We traveled all over Europe, but not there! Bryan really wanted to go, so finally, we did, on the weekend after the packers were finished at our house. Our dear friend Robin decided to spent her R&R from Afghanistan with us in Italy, so she was along as well. Not pictured, as she always insists, but so happy to have her with us nonetheless!
Aquileia was founded by the Romans in the year 180 B.C. It was an important city for trade and commerce. In the year 452, the town was utterly destroyed by Attila the Hun.
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| Remains of the Roman Forum |
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| My favorite people |
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| Sara's stone skirt! |
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Remains of ancient canals that allowed goods to be brought into town on small boats,
offloaded from larger ships in the Adriatic Sea. |
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| Hmm ... contemplating ancient commerce routes, or ..... lunch? |
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| They unearthed hundreds of burial urns. |
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| It was a hot day, but a nice walk. |
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Approaching the church from the pathway behind it.
The 240 foot campanile was built in the 9th century. |
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| Cemetery of the Fallen, from WWI, behind the church |
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| Cool statue in the cemetery |
The original Aquileia Basilica was built in the 4th century. The current church was built in the Gothic style in 1379, preserving the original 4th century mosaic tiled floors.
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| Basilica of Aquileia |
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| Stay off! 1700 year old mosaic work! |
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| Close up of mosaic floor |
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| Family shot -- thanks to Robin! |
After we finished in Aquileia, we drove about 15 minutes over to the town of Redipuglia, where the Italians built a HUGE, and I mean HUGE WWI monument on the side of a mountain. It was built in 1938 and contains the remains of 100,000 fallen soldiers. We did not take the HUNDREDS of stairs to the top. We went part way up on foot, then came back for the car and drove to the top! It is very hard to portray the enormous scope of this monument.
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| View from the bottom |
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| Walking to the base of the steps |
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| A little closer in |
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Each large "step" is about 8 feet tall and contains vaults for the remains.
The small walking steps are on the side (see them zig-zag in this close-up).
Twelve steps each times about 40 levels -- whew! It would have taken us all day! |
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| Stopping only a fraction of the way up, before the big steps barely even start! |
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| Each large "step" looked like this, with the names of the fallen. |
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| The crosses marking the top |
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| View from the top |
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| Andrew, looking westward over Italy |
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| WWI trenches |
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| WWI bunkers |
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| I took some shots of the flowers at the base of the monument. They were beautiful! No color enhancing here! |
It was a great day trip! Little did Bryan know that he would actually do it all again... (stay tuned)
