Altinum

Altinum (modern Altino, a frazione of Quarto d'Altino) is the name of an ancient coastal town of the Veneti 15 km SE of the modern Treviso, northern Italy, on the edge of the lagoons. Located on the eastern coast of that nation, at the mouth of the river Silis, it was first destroyed by Attila in 452 and gradually abandoned by its inhabitants, who sought refuge in the islands of the lagoon, such as Torcello and Burano, in the area where later Venice would be built.

Altino has today some 100 inhabitants and a historical museum.

Finds of a necropolis and Venetic funeral inscriptions show that it was a center as early as the 5th century BC, although there are traces of human presence in the area dating to as early as the 6th millennium BC.

It increased in importance with the Romanization of the region and, to be specific, with the construction of the Via Annia (131 BC), which passed through, linking Atria with Aquileia. At the end of the Republic, Altinum became a municipium, whose citizens were ascribed to the Roman tribe Scaptia. Augustus and his successors gave it further importance with the construction of the Via Claudia Augusta, which began at Altinum and reached the "limes" of the northeast at the Danube, a distance of some 500 kilometers, by way of Lake Constance. The place, thus, became of considerable strategic and commercial importance, and the comparatively mild climate (considering its northerly situation) led to the erection of villas that Martial compares with those of Baiae.Strabo wrote that "Altinum too is in a marsh, for the portion it occupies is similar to that of Ravenna", a waterlogged city whose canals were flushed by the tides: "These cities, then, are for the most part surrounded by the marshes, and hence subject to inundations.".

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