Early Christian Mausoleum

In 1975, during repair work on the waterfall in front of the Basilica, a building called the Early Christian Mausoleum was discovered. As a result of excavations that started at this time, an early Christian cemetery was discovered, and below it was the largest burial chamber, with painted walls and three vandalised sarcophagi. A part of the original paintings of the burial chamber are decorations to fill in the surface: imitation marble paintings with red medallions in the middle. The other part of the paintings comprises figurative representations. In addition to the frescoes, decorations can be seen on the sarcophagus, but some of them, unfortunately, were ruined during the Migration Period. The frescoes on the northern wall depict frequent contemporary Christian iconography: the fall of Adam and Eve, the prophet Daniel in the lions’ den, and finally the motif of the Tree of Life. These draw attention to the fallibility of earthly being. On the eastern wall there is the symbol of Christ, or the Christogram, made up of the Greek letters khi and ro (X and P).