Aosta · Italy
Aosta Cathedral
This cathedral is built on the Roman forum, and it is the same account as the arch: the new power installs itself exactly where the old one stood, not by chance but by succession. Inside, beneath your feet, are medieval floor mosaics with animals, the months of the year and figures entirely without solemnity, made to be walked upon and looked down at, and they are where medieval art permits itself irony. In the choir, carved wooden stalls. In the treasury, the wooden crucifix that hung for centuries inside the Arch of Augustus: the Saint-Vout, brought here once the original required protection. The front you see from the square is nineteenth-century, but it is only the last layer: beneath it lie the eleventh century, the Gothic, the Renaissance, each age remaking what stood before it without discarding what stood behind. A cathedral is not a building. It is a stratigraphy you can walk into.
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What do the mosaics show?
Calendar scenes and symbolic figures: the labours of the months, real and imaginary animals, motifs taken from the ancient repertoire. They are floors, so they were made to be walked on and looked down at.
What is the treasury?
The collection of liturgical objects and reliquaries the cathedral gathered over the centuries, now a museum. Among the pieces is the original crucifix from the Arch of Augustus.
What was here before?
The public heart of the Roman city: the forum square and its sacred area. Building the cathedral here was not chance, it was succession.
Where it is
More stories in Aosta
- Adret and envers
- When the railway arrived
- Arch of Augustus
- Regional Archaeological Museum
- The villages the city swallowed
- The Battle of the Queens
- Church of Santo Stefano
- The steelworks