The village rebuilt stone by stone after the earthquake
At the entrance to the Carnic Alps, in the valley of the Tagliamento, Venzone is a small medieval town surrounded by a double ring of walls, which tells one of the most extraordinary stories of rebirth in Italy. In 1976, two terrible earthquakes, on 6 May and 15 September, struck Friuli, causing almost a thousand deaths and destroying entire villages. Venzone, which had been declared a national monument in 1965 for its intact medieval centre, was almost completely razed to the ground. Instead of building a new town, the inhabitants decided to rebuild it exactly as it was and where it was: the stones of the ruins were collected, numbered and catalogued one by one, and the monuments were reconstructed with the technique of "anastylosis", putting each stone back in its original place.
The symbol of this reconstruction is the Duomo di Sant'Andrea, a Gothic church of the fourteenth century, rebuilt with thousands of original stones, whose numbering can still be seen on some blocks. The rebirth of Venzone has become a model studied all over the world, and in 2017 the village was voted "Borgo dei Borghi", the most beautiful village in Italy. In the crypt of the chapel of San Michele, near the cathedral, the famous mummies of Venzone are preserved, bodies naturally mummified thanks to a particular fungus present in the tombs, discovered in the seventeenth century. In October, Venzone hosts the Festa della Zucca, a pumpkin festival with medieval costumes and celebrations.
Tip: look for the numbers on the stones of the Duomo; visit the exhibition on the earthquake and the reconstruction.
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