Aulla – Important archaeological find on Saturday afternoon in Aulla along the Magra river not far from theSan Caprasio Abbey. It is a finely sculpted marble capital identified by two pilgrims traveling on the Via Francigena. The two tourists immediately called the police. «I admit that when the carabinieri entered the Museum as we were about to start the inauguration of an exhibition, I felt a shiver – says the writer from Aulle Melanie Sebastiani – Once again the San Caprasio Museum tells us that we haven’t finished discovering its secrets yet. And once again it is contemporary art that sheds a light on our past». It was a real coup de scene that took place during the inauguration of the exhibition of the architect and sculptor Cesare Nardi “Ytalia” at the San Caprasio Museum. At the inauguration, when the carabinieri arrived, everyone was there. The mayor of Aulla Robert Valettini, the culture delegate Grazia Tortoriello, the councilor Giovanni Schianchi, the artist. Just before the toast, the carabinieri arrived together with the pilgrims who found the archaeological find. «The two fairs facing each other in this fragment of a probable crutch capital are very beautiful. A similar specimen is in the San Caprasio museum» said the historian and researcher Richard Boggi. Today the technicians of the Superintendency of Fine Arts of Florence are expected in Aulla for an inspection.
As the crow flies, the capital discovered in the river is not far from the Aullese Abbey. The level of the Magra has dropped a lot as perhaps it hadn’t happened before. This may have brought the archaeological find back to the surface. An inspection was immediately carried out by the carabinieri and by Mayor Valettini himself on the riverbed to ascertain that there were no other valuable “pieces”. “After contacting both the Superintendent of Fine Arts Angela Acordon and the Carabinieri command by telephone, the find was removed and made safe – explained Valettini – The marble artefact is now kept in the Aulla police station awaiting the first investigations which presumably will take place tomorrow by the Superintendency together with the appropriate Carabinieri Unit of Florence”.
In recent years, the Abbey of San Caprasio has been restoring an important part of history to the town. When the bombs of the Anglo-American allies, starting in December 1943, devastated the historic center of Aulla the buildings of the ancient abbey and the left aisle of the church were also affected, so much so that it was decided to build a new one. Fortunately Silvestro Bassi, former podestà of Aulla and author, in 1927, of the volume “The Castle and the Abbey of Aulla” opposed the project with the support of a large part of the population and so, despite the damages of incongruous restorations carried out in the early 50’s, the church was saved. On the ruins of the abbey building, the buildings of a nursery school were built and the whole area of the cloister became a dumping ground for stones and materials resulting from the bombing of the town.
Only the arched niches of the main apse, the memory of the popular tradition that wanted the tomb of San Caprasio hidden below the altar and the famous deed of the year 884 with which Adalberto I of Tuscany expressed the will to erect a church at the confluence of Magra and Aulella, endowing the same and the erecting monastery with considerable assets. The hammer blow that Marino Navalesi, then a seminarian, and today vicar of bishop of Massa, in the spring of 2000 gave on the crumbling plaster of the main apse revealed the unusual texture of part of the facing and, encouraged by Tiziano Mannoni, the Municipality of Aulla and the Parish undertook in the summer of 2001 the first research campaign on the elevation and archaeological excavations.
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