Elżbieta Mierzwińska*
In antiquity, Aquileia was one of the dynamic craft centres of the Roman Empire . It was founded in 181 BCE as a commercial settlement and gained renown as a place of manufacture of bronze and glass products. However, its true claim to fame and fortune came from the amber imported from the Baltic coast starting in the 1 st century CE. Roman merchants would take off from Aquileia to the north via the famous Amber Route , which served as the main trade road to “barbaric” countries, already during the times of Celtic dominance in central Europe . The merchants would bring raw amber nuggets to Aquileia , where they would be made into diverse products in specialised workshops. Over the first three centuries of the Common Era, this production kept up the fashion for amber and the interest in it among wealthy Roman ladies. In 452, the town was destroyed by Attila the Hun. What remains from its heyday are the ruins of the ancient forum, harbour, houses and chapels as well as a cemetery, while all that is left from a later period is a Romanesque-Gothic cathedral built on the foundations of an early Christian church with exquisite mosaic floors from the 5 th -6 th century. In 1998, Aquileia 's entire archaeological zone together with the cathedral was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The founding of the museum
The collection of ancient amber artefacts is housed in Aquileia 's Museo Archeologico Nazionale. It began with the archaeological finds from the city which had belonged to Canon Gian Domenico Bertoli (1676-1763). After his death, the collection was purchased by Count Antonio Cassis Faraone. One of the Cassis family's palaces later became the seat of today's museum. The initiator of founding the first museum in Aquileia was Leopoldo Zuccolo (1761-1833), a painter from Udine . The museum was opened in 1807 in the ancient baptistery and the chapel at the cathedral. The current museum in the villa Cassis Faraone was opened in 1882. In 1909, a stone monument gallery (lapidario) was opened next to it; the museum's collection increased significantly in the 1950s as a result of wide scale excavations. Among the items obtained this way were many funerary steles and urns used in burial ceremonies in Aquileia.
Today, the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale includes valuable ancient statues and portrait heads, mosaics and bas-reliefs, bronze, ceramics and glass exhibits, precious stone intaglios as well as gold and ivory artefacts. A unique collection of amber artefacts housed on its second floor is the pride of the museum.
The most valuable exhibits
As we might expect from a passage in Pliny the Elder's (fl. 70 CE) Naturalis Historia , which reads “ amber an article which, for the present, however, is in request among women only, ” the exhibition in Aquileia is indeed dominated by women's ornaments, decorative bibelots and practical items:
- magnificent rings with sculpted women's heads or busts; made entirely of amber or with “eyes” made of precious stones, often with wavy loops;
- pendants shaped like fruit or stylised animals; the most common motifs include acorns, olives, fruit stones, cereal ears, birds, dogs, lizards and dolphins;
- necklaces made of variously shaped beads;
- toiletries: small sculpted vessels used for creams and scents, a tiny perfume bottle, a small spoon, a mirror frame, a miniature olive lamp and dice;
- items described as miniature spinning tools, canes or sceptres, cosmetic accessories made of amber beads placed on metal rods. They would often be placed in women's graves so it is thought that they might have symbolised the spindle of Kloto, the goddess of fate, who in Roman mythology spun the thread of human life;
- amber laurel leaves with engraved letters: ANNFF, which stand for AN(num) N(ovum) F(austum) F(elicem): a unique New Year's “card”;
- amulets in the form of variously shaped pendants (stylised phalluses, horns, hands folded in prayer);
- sculptures: three-dimensional compositions depicting cupids at play, Eros and Psyche, human and animal figures and monsters in low relief;
All the amber artefacts exhibited at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Aquileia are small and reddish in colour, which is characteristic of ancient amber artefacts. Their size was not only the result of the kinds of items produced, but also because they were usually made of a single amber nugget. The lathes, drills, files and other metal tools used in making these artefacts allowed precise cuts, hole drilling, sculpting, grinding and polishing of artefacts.
The small works of art from the Aquileian workshops were not only popular among the wealthy ladies of Rome but also found customers throughout the Empire. These were luxury products which were very expensive; Pliny the Elder (Naturalis historia, XXXVII) wrote that the price of a small amber figurine was equal to the price of a slave. Today, such artefacts, equally priceless due to their rarity and artistic value, can be seen in many European museums, including Cologne, Dresden, London, Sopron (Hungary) and Graz (Austria). They usually come from excavations in former Roman provinces. However, the largest and most valuable collection is kept in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Aquileia, the place where the workshops making artefacts of Baltic amber operated in the first centuries of the Common Era.
* The author is the Senior Curator of the Amber Collection at the Castle Museum in Malbork
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