Le monete dai sepolcri di Ambrogio, Gervaso e Protaso

The essay presents the coins found during the excavations carried out inside the Basilica of St. Ambrose at the end of the 19th century. They brought to light two burial niches in which the bodies of St. Ambrose and the two martyred brothers, Gervasius and Protase, had initially been placed. The coins are only known thanks to the descriptions and drawings (both rather unreliable) published by Monsignor Luigi Biraghi in his small volume "I tre sepolcri santambrosiani" (1864) and to the brief references handed down twenty years later by Monsignor Francesco M. Rossi in his "Cronaca dei ristauri e delle scoperte fatte nell'insigne basilica di S. Ambrosio dal anno 1857 al 1876". The paper also discusses seven unpublished coins kept in a small box in the Chapter Archive of the Basilica with the annotation "Ancient coins found in the excavations of the tomb of St. Ambrose". These coins, on the contrary, are a sestertium of Roman age and specimens issued in the 13th, 15th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries mostly from the Milan mint. The exact provenance of the coins is not currently ascertainable.