The reuse of the reuse of these materials, too, has always been on the city’s agenda. This is well known by Lorenzo Calvelli, professor at Ca' Foscari University and expert in Latin epigraphy. His work is linked to the National Archaeological Museum in Venice, whose courtyard houses some of the most interesting examples of epigraphic recycling to be found in the city of lagoons.
Unlike many other Italian cities, Venice does not stand on an ancient settlement of Greco-Roman origin; beneath the city are salt marshes. This alone would be enough to make it unique in both the national and Mediterranean panorama; however, over the centuries, a great deal of building material from the Greco-Roman era has arrived, especially from the nearby city of Altino, which has been used for the construction of buildings, wells, or to embellish the city itself.
A striking example of this is the original structure of the 'Paron de casa', the bell tower of St. Mark's, dating back to the 9th-10th centuries, which, as was discovered following the collapse on July 14,1902 and the excavation of the foundations, was built with re-used materials.
For the occasion, the world-famous Venetian archaeologist Giacomo Boni, who led the excavations in the Roman Forum and the restoration of the Doge's Palace, was called in to supervise the work. He ascertained precisely the use of stamped bricks and stones from the Roman era. Evidence of this important discovery can be found in a stone funerary stele, inserted in the fourth step of the base of the bell tower and now housed in the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art Sant'Apollonia.
This is the case of a cinerary box urn, preserved in the courtyard of the National Archaeological Museum in Venice. Dated between the 1st-2nd century AD, its history is still legible on the surface of the stone, where two inscriptions have been placed, in a kind of long-distance dialogue between women.
While one can decipher that Hicete Terenzia, a freed slave of Caius, ordered that a funerary monument be made in her will for herself, her mother, father and sister, the other documents the transfer of a wellhead to the Benedictine nuns' monastery of Ognissanti, in the Dorsoduro sestiere, which took place at the time of Abbess Pacifica Barbarigo in 1518.
