Edilizia di prestigio nella tarda antichità. Nuovi dati sulla decorazione ad opus sectile dallo scavo di via d’Azeglio a Ravenna

The archaeological excavations carried out in via d’Azeglio, Ravenna, in 1993-1994 unearthed part of a large urban insula. It encompasses two residential blocks overlooking a paved street. Archaeological findings reveal a very long settlement history, lasting from the Late Republican to Early Mediaeval period. In Late Antiquity, the northern sector was radically remodeled, having this reconfiguration its first phase in the construction of two rooms in the north-eastern area. This paper aims at a reappraisal of the marble decoration pertaining to one of these rooms (n. 12) with reference to pavement and wall revetments. It relies on an in-depth analysis of excavation documentation, along with direct investigation of floor preparation and marble items as well. Some of the latter was found in primary association in room 12, while a relevant set of crustae has been recovered from a fill layer deposited into a later trench. The archaeological documentation allows reconstructing the floor decoration scheme by building upon the detection of two different opus sectile decorations. Both of them are attributable to drawings related to a wide dimension squared module with complex motifs in “quadricromia neroniana”. The main comparisons for these pavements match the stratigraphic data in suggesting a dating between the mid-4th and mid-5th century and point out a very prestigious building owed to an upper-class patron