Locations
St Andrew Church in Betiga near Barbariga
The oldest part of the St Andrew sacral complex in Betiga is the early Christian trefoil layout memorial chapel with an altar tomb, and an early Christian mosaic with an early 5th century donor's inscription. The surviving parts of the black and white mosaic pavement in the side apses and around the altar depict geometric, cruciform, and stylised plant motifs.
In the next construction phase, the original trefoil memoria (with pilaster strips on the outside wall faces) was incorporated into a nave-and-side-aisles plan rectangular basilica. Seven pairs of columns with Corinthian capitals highlighted the separation of the nave from the aisles of the basilica. A polychrome mosaic pavement from the first half of the 5th century survives in the nave. The larger mosaic field is framed by a band with a series of heart-shaped motifs. The field is filled with quatrefoil medallions containing donor inscriptions or adorned with stylised plant and geometric patterns. The smaller mosaic field at the basilica entrance area is more modestly decorated, with series of concentric circles and a row of rhombuses in the framing band.
Late in the 8th or early in the 9th century the early Christian church was remodelled in the pre-Romanesque style. The aisles were shut off from the sanctuary with small with smaller semi-circular apses. The original modest altar screen was replaced with new stone furniture decorated with interlace reliefs. Parts of the pre-Romanesque altar screen (plutei, pilasters), altar ciborium, and ambo have been found. A baptistery with an apse (semi-circular inside, polygonal outside) was added to the south side of the church in the 7th century. A rectangular burial chapel with sarcophagi was later built next to the baptistery.
The basilica complex was eventually extended westward with the construction of a monastery. At the centre of the elongated rectangular building was an atrium with a cistern and, likely, a colonnaded portico. From this common corridor with a portico, one entered a series of rectangular side rooms of the monastery. Numerous finds of ceramic vessels date life in the monastery from the second half of the 5th century to its likely abandonment in the 13th century.
