Il complesso monastico di S. Maria d’Aurona. Architettura e liturgia a Milano tra età longobarda e carolingia

During the building works carried out between 1868 and 1869 for the construction of the head-offices of the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde in Milan, a large mixed group of Early medieval and Romanesque sculpture fragments was uncovered (now in the Sforza Castle Museum). Thanks to topographic coincidences, this group was immediately connected to the so called Aurona nunnery, a monastery probably founded by the Lombard king Liutprandus in the first half of VIII century, that took its name from the unfortunate king’s sister, Aurona, mentioned by Paul Deacon in his Historia Langobardorum. However only in 1944 Alberto de Capitani d’Arzago found the plan of the old building, giving finally an architectural frame to the fragments. Many doubts still remain on the chronological distribution of the pieces, their arrangement in the building and their liturgical function. Nevertheless, some new speculations can be now proposed after the cataloguing of all pieces in the museum’s stores.