Aquileia today is a village of fewer than three thousand people in the flat farmland of Friuli, near the head of the Adriatic, but two thousand years ago it was one of the largest and richest cities of the Roman Empire. Founded as a Latin colony in 181 BC to guard the northeastern approaches to Italy, it grew into a great trading port, connected to the sea by a river and a canal, through which amber, wine, oil and glass moved between the Mediterranean and the lands beyond the Alps. Attila sacked it in 452, and many of its people fled to the lagoons, where their descendants helped found Venice and Grado.
The basilica is the reason to come. Founded in the fourth century, it was rebuilt several times, and the present church, with its tall Romanesque bell tower, stands over one of the largest and most beautiful early Christian mosaic floors in the world. It was uncovered in the early twentieth century, and you walk above it on glass walkways, looking down at fish, birds, shepherds, Jonah being swallowed by a sea monster and donors' portraits, all in tiny coloured stones, all over sixteen hundred years old. UNESCO listed the archaeological area and basilica in 1998.
Around the village the excavated ruins of the Roman city are spread through the fields: the forum, a row of columns along the old river port, house foundations and a cypress-lined cemetery. A good museum holds the finds. The atmosphere is quiet and rural, nothing like the crowds of Pompeii.
The riding around here is flat and straightforward, across the Friulian plain with its maize fields, vineyards and long straight roads lined with poplars. South of Aquileia a causeway road crosses the lagoon to Grado, an old island town with a beautiful little cathedral, fresh fish and beaches. The wind, especially the bora from the northeast, can be strong and sudden. Cervignano del Friuli, six kilometres north, is the nearest town with a full choice of fuel and supermarkets. The local wines of the Aquileia DOC, refosco and friulano among them, are well worth a glass.