Scala Santa" ascended
by the faithful on their knees, whereby they gained the same indulgences
as were attached to the Scala Santa at Rome. The building was a military
magazine in 1649, again from 1798 to 1877, and then a wine-store till,
in 1888, the museum was founded. In 1890-1891 the ancient entrance-door
was found behind the eighteenth-century additions. It is a simple
square-headed door with semicircular opening above, made of Roman
uncarved material, with consecration-crosses sunk in the lintel and base
of the right-hand jamb; to the right and left of the lintel a little
above it are two simple brackets with crosses on them. The lintel itself
is double, and treated as if it were wood. The cill was two feet below
the ground level.

[Illustration: PLANS OF S. DONATO, ZARA]

The museum contains Roman and pre-Roman antiquities, inscriptions,
lamps, carved fragments, coins, bronze and glass vessels, pottery, &c.;
mediaeval fragments, carved and gilded panels, lanterns and ensigns from
Venetian galleys, a crozier of Limoges work of the thirteenth century
found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, arms and carvings of the
Renaissance period, &c. But perhaps the most interesting things are the
plans of the early churches which have either been destroyed or very
much altered, and the early mediaeval carvings; among these are two very
curious slabs with figures under arches, one of which was found under
the pavement of S. Crisogono, while the other, closely resembling it in
style, came from S. Domenico. The former shows the Flight into Egypt and
the Massacre of the Innocents; the latter the Nativity and Adoration of
the Kings. They probably formed part of a chancel enclosure. There are
also fragments of ciboria, altar frontals, or sarcophagi, while a column
sawn in two has furnished decorated jambs to the door of the upper
church. On a lintel of the early church of S. Lorenzo is a Christ in a
mandorla, supported by angels with a sacred tree on each side and a
griffin beyond; a rough astragal moulding surrounds the subject. The
jambs have a rough arabesque scroll, terminating in a two-headed bird.
These carvings are all of the ninth century.

[Illustration: SECTION OF S. LORENZO, ZARA

_To face page 217_]

The church of S. Lorenzo is in the courtyard of the military command
building on the Piazza dei Signori. The sides are in courts entered from
the Calle Larga and Via del Teatro Vecchio. It has a nave and aisles
about