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Those who want to understand what
Carnia was like in the past centuries, the
customs of its inhabitants, their ways of
facing the difficulties of life in an often
hostile environment, their religious spirit,
their everyday life, those must not miss
the Museum of Tolmezzo,
where in so many years
of devout dedication
and research
the illustrious scholar
(and senator) Michele
Gortani has collected
thousands of objects
coming from houses in
the area. A unique
museum in Italy, set in
a region that still,
surprisingly and
fortunately, does not deny
the traditional rhythms of
life. And Tolmezzo is the capital city of the
area, a town by the clean and happy face,
with a few porticoed streets and important
palaces, among which the residence of Jacopo
Linussio, the forerunner of modern tycoons,
whose flax mills in the 18th-century,
state-of-the-art as for labour planning, could
compete with the greatest factories in Europe. In
even more distant times, however, the capital
town was Iulium Carnicum, today's Zuglio, that
the Romans had built to defend the mountain
territory by creating a municipium. Of the ancient
splendour of Zuglio now the ruins of the forum
and the finds exhibited in the local archaeological
museum remain. The ancient rural churches of S.
Maria at Invillino, S. Floriano at
Illegio, S. Pietro at Zuglio,
S. Stefano at Cesclans
have stories to tell on the
devoutness of the Carnia
people, who had embellished
their churches with works of
art. This is because Carnia
means well-living but also
culture, something that all
centres, with no exception, are
provided with; and if the
Renaissance wooden altars
of Paluzza and Dierico
are a worth example of
artistic value
together with the
paintings by Nicola
Grassi at Sezza or
Tolmezzo, sometimes a simple house by the simple
rural lines (at Cercivento, Verzegnis, Villa
Santina), or a stone or wooden ornament are
enough to record how a certain taste for art has
always guided these populations in their work.
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