| Municipality of Venzone
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Pop.: 2,297
Area: 54,16 sq. km, 230 m a.s.l.
Neighbourhoods: Carnia, Pioverno, Portis
Town Hall: P. Municipio, 1 - 33010 Venzone
Phone.: 0432.985266 Fax: 0432.985404
www.comune.venzone.ud.it
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The terrible
catastrophe of
1976 destroyed the
medieval town of
Venzone, pulling
down walls, churches,
palaces and houses. Today,
however, Venzone has almost
completely recovered its
original aspect thanks to the
careful philological
reconstruction of its
monuments and its urban
plan in general. The duomo
was rebuilt between 1988 and
1995 with the original parts
and in full respect of the
original structures. Erected in
local stone in the early 1300s
on the site of a pre-existing
church dated to the year 1000
and enlarged in 1251 by
feudal lord Glizoio di Mels,
the duomo was consecrated
by Patriarch Bertrand of Saint
Geniès and has a Latin cross
plan, with single nave and
luminous transept onto which
open the triumphal arches
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of
the three apse presbyteries,
flanked by two towers. The
outside is articulated, with
polygonal apses reinforced
ending in pyramidal spires
and statues. Of the three
portals, the most artistically
interesting is the one facing
north (1308) with a relief
Blessing Christ in the lunette
by master Giovanni, to whose
school is also attributed the
relief in the south portal
lunette (Coronation of the
Virgin), while the lunette of
the main portal with a
Crucifixion bas-relief dates
from the mid-14th century.
Still on the outside, statues
and 14th-century reliefs
decorate the walls, together with six
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Venetian-Byzantine
paterae. Inside, important
14th-century frescoes are
contained, including the large
fresco of the Duomo
Consecration, St. Martin
and the poor (1350 ca) and
an exquisite St. George
freeing the princess from the
dragon, remarkable for its
chromatic interplay, its
basically popular and naïf
scheme but fresh and vivid
all the same. The right apse
houses a spectacular stone
Vesperbild dating to the early
1400s. Above the right-hand
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side portal, a Mourning of
Christ (Beweinung Christi) in
painted and gilded wood is
made of eight good-quality
statues and dates from about
1530. Bernardino da Bissone
is the author of the baptismal
font, the two holy water
spouts and the Antonini tomb
slab (early 16th cent.).
Unfortunately, the lovely
cycle of early 15th-century
frescoes decorating the vault
in the Chapel of the
Gonfalone (the Gonfalon)
was irremediably lost.
In the crypt of the Chapel
of S. Michele, a round plan
building, some mummies are
kept, the oldest of which
dates to 1647: such mummies
formed thanks to a fungus
that dehydrates the body in
one year's time, thus causing
the skin to become
...
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| FROM UDINE TO JULIAN PRE-ALPS
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The pleasant hilly area of Friuli, the
strip of land running from Gemona to
San Daniele almost to reach the suburbs
of Udine, has always been, through the
centuries, subject to earthquakes: suffice
it to mention the appalling
earthquakes of 1348
(also mentioned by
the Florentine historian
Filippo Villani), of
1511 (that halfdestroyed
Udine...go
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