There’s an architectural term—spolia—which basically means “janky combination of material scavenged from various historical periods”.

A perfect place to see spolia in action is the Cathedral of San Giusto in Trieste, Italy.

If you look at it from the perspective of early Christian builders, it makes sense. Your religion is new and you’ve got to get some churches going because, man, those suckers take hundreds of years to finish. It costs a lot of money and materials can be hard to transport and hey, got to find some skilled labor too. And there’s all this Roman stuff just hanging around everywhere, looking old fashioned and downright pagan. Are you tempted to to steal it?

Let’s look closer at the surrounds of the door of Trieste’s Cathedral—its pretty easy to tell that they are Roman.

This was taken from a large grave marker (I reversed them above so you can see how the figures were orginally oriented, with a pediment on top).

And here’s San Giusto himself, holding up a little model of a janky cathedral, surrounded by bits of janky materials salvaged from old buildings and monuments.

Look at the columns inside the cathedral, with their motley assortment of capitals. They were also scavenged from Roman buildings.

Much less lovable is the fascist-era mosaic in the apse—those jerks ripped out an exquisite medieval mosaic to put up this crap.

Hey, I might be janky too but at least I don’t walk around during services with my dog, wearing a mini skirt.

How I got to Trieste: train from Udine.

Where I slept: L’Albero Nascosto.  Price: €135 for a single.  Recommended: yes