Luna: A Roman Colony and Harbor in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Classical
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval
- Civilizations
- Byzantine, Carolingian, Roman
- Site type
- City
On this page24 sections
History
Luna was a Roman colony at modern Luni in Italy, founded in 177 BCE as a military outpost during Rome’s campaigns against the Ligurian Apuani. Before the colony existed, Greek and Etruscan ships used the natural harbor at the Magra’s mouth, and Rome had made the port a naval base by the early second century BCE. The harbor and nearby marble quarries later helped make Luna an important center of maritime commerce.
Foundation and Roman prosperity
Before Luna’s foundation, the port supported Roman military operations and voyages to Spain. Cato the Elder called there in 195 BCE, and Roman forces gathered at the harbor in 186 and 185 BCE. Rome deported more than 40,000 Apuani to Samnium in 180 BCE, followed by another 7,000 the next year. In 177 BCE, three appointed commissioners settled 2,000 Roman citizens at Luna. Each received 51½ iugera, a Roman measure of land area. The assigned territory had been taken from the Ligurians, although it had earlier belonged to the Etruscans, an ancient people of central Italy.
A dispute over the boundary between Luna and Pisa came before the Roman Senate in 168 BCE. Rome subdued the Ligurians in 155 BCE, when the consul and general Claudius Marcellus defeated them. A dedication at Luna later commemorated his victory over the Ligurians and Apuani. The Via Aemilia Scauri, built in 109 BCE, connected the colony with Rome and other routes along the coast.
Luna prospered during the Republic and expanded under Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. It became part of Regio VII Etruria, an administrative region of Italy, and its central public square, or forum, and other districts grew. An honorary dedication named Octavian, later Augustus, as the colony’s patron, with the inscription dated either to 28 or 33 BCE. The idea that this dedication marked a new land distribution and settlement has not been established.
The Apuan Alps’ marble quarries became a major source of the city’s wealth. Extraction grew again in the late Republic and became systematic under Augustus, with Luna serving as a shipping port for the stone. Most quarries were under imperial control before Nero’s death, and an administrative archive for them existed in the Flavian period, the dynasty that followed Nero. Luna also traded timber, wine, and cheese. Its prosperity relied more on maritime commerce than on a rich agricultural hinterland.
In the second century CE, members of Luna’s Monettii family may have established the first settlement at Moneta, near the quarries. Building activity revived under the Antonine emperors and continued under the Severan dynasty. A citizen of Luna, Eutychianus, became bishop of Rome in 275 and died in 283. By the fifth century, Luna itself was a bishop’s seat. Bishop Felix attended a council called by Pope Hilarius in 465, and the diocese then extended along the coast and inland into the Garfagnana.
Late Roman and Byzantine periods
During the second half of the fourth century, public monuments and large houses were abandoned, and buildings were dismantled or deteriorated. A severe earthquake has been proposed as one cause; another interpretation links the change to a slower decline as the marble trade contracted. Luna remained active into the fifth century, when construction included work on the House of Mosaics and the first cathedral. Exceptional floods in the second half of the seventh century may have buried parts of the city beneath mud and gravel. Efforts to manage the water continued into the eighth century.
Gothic forces sacked Luna in the early sixth century, and some inhabitants fled to nearby settlements. Byzantine forces, belonging to the eastern Roman Empire, retook the city under their general Narses in 552. Luna retained its bishopric and became a civil and military center in a coastal district commanded by a military tribune, an army officer. Evidence of continued habitation spans this period.
Lombard and Carolingian rule
King Rothari and the Lombards, a Germanic people who established a kingdom in Italy, conquered Luna and the rest of Liguria in 643. The change weakened the city’s economy. Trade increasingly favored Lucca, local nobles moved toward the more defensible Carrara valley, and Lombard support for the nearby abbey of Brugnato challenged the bishop’s influence. Luna became part of the Duchy of Lucca and later issued its own low-quality coins under Lombard rule.
Charlemagne occupied Luna in 773, and it became a county center. The following year, an agreement between his representatives and Pope Adrian I placed the city on the boundary between their spheres of influence. Luna recovered in part under the Carolingians, and its cathedral entered a new building phase in the eighth and ninth centuries.
An eighth-century tradition tells of a ship with no crew bringing a crucifix to Luna. In the story, an angel guided John, bishop of Lucca, to the harbor, prompting a dispute between him and Luna’s bishop. One version says the crucifix went to Lucca, while a small vessel said to contain Christ’s blood remained with the people of Luna.
Medieval decline and abandonment
Saracen forces, a medieval term for Muslim raiders or armies, sacked Luna in 849, but did not destroy it. A raid attributed to Vikings around 860 is less certain. Tradition says their leaders Hasting and Björn Ironside mistook Luna for Rome and that Hasting entered by pretending to convert and die. The story may preserve a real attack, but it has also been treated as legend; the associated account of Bishop Ceccardo’s martyrdom is uncertain.
In 900, King Berengar I granted Luna’s bishop an immunity charter, giving specified exemptions from public obligations and beginning a series of privileges that strengthened episcopal power. By 945, Oberto I was count of Luna; in 951 he received the Eastern Ligurian March, a frontier territory intended to help resist pirate attacks. In 963, Otto I granted Bishop Adalbert lands in the Magra valley, including the first known mention of Carrara.
Luna had a final period of relative activity in the tenth century as a market and a stopping place on the Via Francigena, a medieval pilgrimage route to Rome. Piracy and attacks by Arab forces continued. In 1016, Saracen forces invaded, and Pope Benedict VIII assembled defenders; Luna survived the attack. During the eleventh century, residents increasingly moved to settlements nearby, especially Sarzana.
Harbor silting, malaria, and pirate attacks contributed to Luna’s decline. Port activity shifted in part to Ameglia and the Magra estuary, though ships still called at Luna occasionally into the twelfth century. The bishop’s seat moved to Sarzana in 1204, and the marshy city was deserted by the beginning of the thirteenth century. Church and civil officials continued to use the title “of Luna” afterward.
Later stories offered other explanations for the city’s fall, blaming it on Alaric, the Vandals, or the martyrdom of Bishop Habetdeus. No ancient record describes a Vandal attack on Luna. Renaissance histories also invented a foundation by Janus-Noah and a supposed founder called Lucumone. These accounts are distinct from the documented history of the colony.
Rediscovery and excavation
Luna’s ruins were identified as the ancient city in the fifteenth century. In 1461, Cardinal Filippo Calandrini asked Pope Pius II to prevent further damage, with little effect. Stone from the site went into Sarzana’s municipal palace in 1471; in 1510, Sarzana’s council gave a marble triton found at Luna to the French governor at Genoa. Antiquarian attention grew over the following centuries. Agostino Bernucci wrote about the city and harbor before 1560, Ercole Spina mapped the Magra estuary in 1592, and Ippolito Landinelli compiled a history in 1610. The Vinzoni cartographers made the first graphic survey of the ancient city in 1752.
Organized excavation began in 1837 under Angelo Remedi and focused especially on the forum. The work, financed by King Charles Albert and reported on by Carlo Promis, continued until 1859. Among its finds were terracotta sculptures from the Great Temple’s gable. Excavations and clearance from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth exposed monuments including the amphitheatre, but looting badly damaged the cemetery area and Christian basilica. A small sanctuary of Isis outside the walls was uncovered in 1882.
An antiquarium opened in 1951, followed by the National Archaeological Museum in 1964, which displayed material returned from museums in Turin and Florence. Large-scale work at the colony began in the 1970s under Antonio Frova, in collaboration with the University of Milan and a British research team, and continued into the early 2000s. Later investigations examined areas around the Capitolium, main streets, harbor, House of Frescoes, and Porta Marina. Excavations at Porta Marina by the University of Pisa began in 2014 and continued alongside studies of the city’s layout and environment, including the ancient coastline.
Remains
Luna occupied a low rise near the mouth of the Magra, where the ancient shoreline reached the city. The estuary lay to the northwest; a salt lagoon on the seaward side was sheltered by a sandbar and barrier island. The site is now inland from the sea. Its planned grid covered about 560 by 438 metres. A wall enclosed the city, with gates on each side and a pronounced indentation along the southwest, probably shaped by the nearby lagoon or open water. The original walls had fallen out of use by the first century CE. By probably the second half of the fifth century, a smaller circuit enclosed the southwestern district known as the Citadel. The main east-west, or southeast-northwest, street followed the line of the Via Aemilia Scauri. The principal cross street ran roughly northeast to southwest, connecting the forum and harbor. Heavy wheeled traffic was barred from it, and large houses lined this extension of the central public area.
Forum and religious buildings
Forum and civic buildings
The forum was paved with large marble slabs and enlarged in the Julio-Claudian period, the early imperial dynasty that followed Augustus. Shops stood beneath covered walkways around the square. The civic complex also included a public hall, or civil basilica, and a curia, a council building. The civil basilica served public life and was distinct from the later Christian cathedral.
Capitolium
Beside the forum stood the Capitolium, the city’s principal temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva and its earliest known building. Its raised temple platform measured 20 by 30.6 metres and supported an inner chamber divided into three parts. The platform rested on polygonal foundations of local Corvo stone, laid in a pattern compared to a wasp’s nest. The first building phase dates to the second quarter of the second century BCE. A probable rebuilding under Augustus renewed the upper structure with bases and four-sided Ionic capitals; two smaller temples beside it may have served the imperial cult.
Monumental fountain
A large U-shaped fountain behind the Capitolium was built under Augustus and Tiberius. It had a colonnade and bases for honorary statues, and construction continued into the Flavian period. An inscription from Vespasian’s reign was associated with the complex.
Great Temple
In Luna’s southwestern district, the Great Temple is identified as a sanctuary of the goddess Luna. Its first phase, built within decades of the colony’s foundation, had architectural decoration in terracotta. Gable sculptures showed a gathering of gods; one reconstruction places Luna on a throne between Apollo and Dionysus, each accompanied by a Muse. The terracotta pieces are now in the National Archaeological Museum in Florence.
The temple was extensively rebuilt in marble between the late Augustan and Tiberian periods, then renewed under the Severan emperors. Its raised platform combined concrete construction with other materials and rose about 7.5 metres above ancient ground level. The nearly square inner chamber had half-columns attached to its rear and long walls, and a monumental staircase led up to it. In front lay a colonnaded court on three sides, about 60 by 50 metres, with marble paving and a processional route. Fragments of a dedication inscription point to rebuilding or renovation between 180 and 222 CE, but the emperor named may have been Commodus, Caracalla, or Elagabalus. An armored statue from the first century CE was found in the eastern covered walkway.
Other sacred buildings and theatre
An area east of the forum has been linked with a so-called Temple of Diana, although that identification remains uncertain. The theatre stood within the city walls near the northern, probably northeastern, corner.
Residential areas
Houses around the forum and main streets
Large houses occupied the blocks around the forum and principal streets. They included the Republican House east of the square, the Western House, and the House of Oceanus near the western wall. The House of Frescoes stood along a secondary street north of the square.
Porta Marina houses
Two large houses excavated at Porta Marina date to the late Republic. They had mosaics and wall paintings in the Second Style, a Roman form of decoration using painted architectural illusions. In the second half of the first century CE, one house was converted from domestic use to make way for a temple on a high platform.
House of Mosaics
A floor mosaic from the House of Mosaics, dated to the third or fourth century CE, depicts Rome’s Circus Maximus and the viewing box used by emperors. Uncovered during archaeological work and brought to attention in the 1980s, it provides evidence for reconstructing the racecourse.
Amphitheatre
The amphitheatre stood outside the walls, about 250 metres beyond the eastern gate, beside the Via Aurelia Nova. Built under the Antonine emperors, it was oval and measured 88.5 by 70.2 metres. Its seating terraces held about 7,000 people, and a covered walkway surrounded the structure above the seats. Two opposed entrances, each with double gates, served gladiators; other entrances were distributed around the building. A channel separated the arena from the seating. After the fifth century, the amphitheatre was quarried for building stone, though part of its vaulted structure survives.
Harbor
The harbor was a broad natural inlet on the left bank of the Magra estuary, whose ancient course was much larger than the river’s present one. Sandbars protected an outer lagoon that ships could reach. Two concrete piers, set at right angles to the estuary, strengthened the sides of its eastern sandbar. As silting affected the inner basin, the outer lagoon became the principal harbor from the Augustan period and could accommodate large cargo ships. Marble was loaded from quays at the city; the mouth of the Carrione stream served that purpose only in the medieval period. Geomorphological study has identified the ancient Lunae Promontory with the sandbar enclosing the estuary.
Cathedral, sanctuary, and burial remains
Cathedral
The first cathedral was built over a house in the southwestern district between the fourth and fifth centuries. By at least the Carolingian period it was dedicated to Saint Mary. It was rebuilt several times, including in the Romanesque style, characterized by features such as rounded arches and heavy masonry, during the twelfth century. The surrounding area also preserves evidence of early-medieval homes, including two houses of the Byzantine period excavated in the forum district.
Sanctuary of Isis
The sanctuary outside the walls near the amphitheatre remained in use at least into the third or fourth century. Finds included a bronze lamp shaped like Osiris, an Egyptian god associated with the afterlife. An inscription records that Vettia Pasipila, a freedwoman, dedicated two garments and two gold eyes to Isis in gratitude for a healing.
Cemeteries and tombs
Cemeteries lay beyond the city gates. A mausoleum southeast of the city was founded partly or wholly on sand, which accounts for its marked tilt. Other burials included mounds, one of which retained a tube running from the burial chamber to its crowning marker. Such tubes were used to make ritual offerings during commemorative meals for the dead.
Dedications and other finds
A large altar dedicated to Luna was recovered in 1955. Other finds from the site include portrait heads, statues of figures in togas, architectural decoration, pottery, coins, inscriptions, and floor mosaics. A marble dedication to Claudius Marcellus commemorates his victory over the Ligurians and Apuani, though the original architectural form of the surviving piece is uncertain. Ancient descriptions called Luna’s walls white or shining; the claim that all its buildings, including the walls, were made of local marble remains uncertain.
