← Back to the map
Modern photograph of the Capitolium of Brixia, Brescia · Wikimedia Commons
Brescia
Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 89 BCE (Roman municipium)
Roman Brixia, a northern-Italy city under the Alps. Vespasian's Capitolium — three temples in one — was newly built and dominated the forum.
A living city of around 200,000; its Roman forum and Capitolium temple, part of the UNESCO "Longobards in Italy" site, stand in the historic centre.
Excavation history
1823
Ateneo di Scienze Lettere e Arti of Brescia — Funded by a public subscription, the Ateneo began excavating the buried Capitolium temple based on fragments that had surfaced on private land.
1826
Ateneo di Scienze Lettere e Arti excavation team — In July 1826 excavators found a hoard of large bronzes hidden between the temple's walls, including the famous Winged Victory statue and six gilded bronze portrait heads.
Notable finds
Winged Victory of Brescia
Cast in bronze from at least thirty separately soldered pieces, this 194cm winged figure was hidden inside a wall cavity of the Capitolium before the temple's ruin and lay buried until workmen struck it on 20 July 1826. It has been Brescia's civic emblem ever since.
Museo di Santa Giulia (displayed within the Capitolium)
Dama Flavia
This 40cm gilded bronze bust of an unnamed Roman matron came out of the same 1826 hoard as the Winged Victory, its eyes inlaid with ivory and hard stone. The tight front curls of her hairstyle date her firmly to the Flavian era of the late 1st century CE.
Museo di Santa Giulia
The Capitolium Bronze Hoard
Alongside the Winged Victory, the 1826 discovery beneath Brescia's Capitolium yielded six gilded bronze imperial portrait busts, including identifiable likenesses of Septimius Severus and Claudius Gothicus, concealed in a wall cavity to keep them from a feared late-antique sack of the city.
Museo di Santa Giulia
Domus of Dionysus Mosaic
Beneath the monastery orchards that gave the site its name, excavators found a Roman-era townhouse whose floor carries a polychrome mosaic of Dionysus reclining among rocks and panthers, inhabited from the 1st through the 3rd century CE.
In situ, Domus dell'Ortaglia, Museo di Santa Giulia
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →