Aquileia is one of the main archeological sites of northern Italy. According to Unesco, which inscribed it in its list of World Heritage sites in 1998, “most of it still lies unexcavated beneath the fields, and as such it constitutes the greatest archaeological reserve of its kind.”

Located in what is today the northern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Aquileia was one of the largest and wealthiest cities of the early Roman Empire, with 100,000 inhabitants in the 2nd century AD.