- Built by
- Attribution to be confirmed
- Period
- Late 5th c.
- Form
- Octagonal drum on a square base
- Stands on
- The Via Sacra
- State
- Among the better preserved — to be confirmed
Provisional information. The highlighted values are placeholders awaiting the site survey and confirmation by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums.
The baptistery stands apart from the church, on the Via Sacra, and it is the building at this site that architects tend to admire most. An octagonal drum is raised over a square base — a difficult transition, handled cleanly — and the result is a compact, precisely resolved structure that has survived better than the great church it served.
Its position matters. A pilgrim who came to be baptised did so on the road, before the summit: the sequence ran through this building and then up. That it was given its own architecture of this quality, rather than a corner of the main church, says how central baptism was to what the site was for.
Its dimensions, the state of the font, and the surviving roofing are to be recorded on the site survey.