Die konstantinische Bischofskirche von Ostia Ergebnisse der zweiten Grabungskampagne 2024

As part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation to investigate the Constantinian bishop‘s church in Ostia, the second excavation campaign took place in the summer of 2024. The project aims to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the historically significant church complex, which was first surveyed geophysically in 1996 and subsequently examined in broad terms during stratigraphic test excavations. In fact, the Constantinian bishop‘s church in Ostia is the only one of the churches founded by Constantine himself that was not later built over or significantly altered. Within this group, it therefore offers an exceptional opportunity for large-scale archaeological investigations. Not only can the architecture and construction of one of the first church buildings ever be intensively researched, but also its adaptation to liturgical or other developments over a long period of use until the cathedral was abandoned in the early 9th century. While the investigations of the first season concentrated on the eastern end of the church and its apse, the 2024 campaign focused on the central area of the nave and its western end with parts of the atrium and the transition to the adjoining buildings to the south. This yielded further important evidence about the structure, development and decoration of the church complex.