Stepping into Cividale del Friuli's Roman-Teutonic Past

December 3, 4:36 PMItaly Culture & Travel ExaminerLucia Mauro

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Alpine setting of Cividale del Friuli.

After spending time in Trieste, once a critical territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, my husband Joe and I decided to head deep into the Alpine villages of Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. We marveled at the latticed Germanic houses and stoically aligned pine trees as we drove north toward the fairly large and historic city of Udine. But we got unexpectedly turned around and found ourselves in Cividale del Friuli - a happy detour that made us never want to turn back.

Cividale's Piazza Paolo Diacono.

My only image of this impossibly idyllic town, founded by Julius Caesar in 50 BC, had been a photograph of the still-standing 8th century Tempietto Longobardo. This Lombardic chapel is marked by a procession of saints in stucco relief - a three-dimensional version of the rigid Byzantine mosaics found in Ravenna. Yet other pictures swirled around my head - from the bronze statue of Caesar in Cividale's Piazza Comunale and ruins from the Dark Ages to the distinct fairytale houses, church steeples out of The Sound of Music, and the snow-sprinkled Alps. 

Julius Caesar reigns over Cividale.

Cividale del Friuli, a sloping village tucked into the Natisone Valley, was once a flourishing Roman colony until the Lombards, a Germanic tribe, invaded it in 568 AD and made it the capital of their first duchy. The invasion was led by the barbarian-king Alboin, most famous for wearing the skull of a previously conquered nomadic ruler around his belt. It was sculpted into a goblet. But, I digress. 

Despite the Lombards' eventual overthrow by the Franks and the later influences of the Venetians, the town is feverishly tied to its Longobard, or Lombard, past. In fact, we had lunch at Cafe Longobardo and dinner at Taverna Longobardo.

When we arrived, we pulled into a parking lot in front of Cividale's National Archaeological Museum, housed in a palazzo designed by Andrea Palladio, the Veneto's famed architect of ordered harmony. It was a picture-perfect late-summer day, and the pretty little shops began closing down for afternoon siesta. We quickly got lolled into Cividale's tidy romanticism. This is where we wanted to stay indefinitely.

I had the name of Locanda Pomo d'Oro, a hotel that began as a hostel in the 11th century. When we couldn't get through on our cell phone to make a reservation, Joe and I figured we would just walk in and see if they had a room. But we kept getting pulled into the area's uncontrived splendor and easy grace. A few hours later, we finally made our way to the hotel.

The winding streets, with stone archways and windows framed by sculpted heads that resembled Marley's ghost, led us into Piazza Paolo Diacono (named for the monk who wrote the first Lombard historic tome). His house faces Cafe Longobardo and sports four pointy wooden church doors above which religious frescoes are slowly being erased by the natural elements. This piazza is the lifeblood of Cividale. Locals demurely frolicked around the central lion-head fountain, and no-nonsense women tended to their potted geraniums jutting in front of the shutters of their multicolored buildings. Everyone seemed to be riding bicycles equipped with wicker baskets; not the slightest whir of a motorino could be detected.

Joe and I got so wrapped up in our aimless wandering that, just past a regal gated villa, we landed on a residential street pointing toward the autostrada. We thought this might be a good time to ask for directions to Locanda Pomo d'Oro. So we stopped in the unobtrusive Bar San Daniele. The man at the counter was slicing prosciutto and layering it in a flower pattern on a platter for the various customers, most of them men who looked liked academics in their wire-rimmed glasses and tweed sport coats. He pointed the way to the hotel's small piazza, San Giovanni, where the inn stood next to a church of the same name.

Before we left the rather studious bar, the proprietor offered us a tissue-paper-thin slice of the region's prosciutto di San Daniele to taste. We have been San Daniele converts ever since, seduced by the cured meat's sweet and delicate flavor. To this day, we find ourselves engaged in heated debates with prosciutto di Parma connoisseurs.

After passing a few farmhouses engulfed in mountains and blue skies, we managed to arrive at Piazza San Giovanni, which turned out to very close to Piazza Paolo Diacono, accessed through a low-hanging arch. We basically walked in a circle to get back to where we began. Chaucer may have once stopped at this Tudor-style inn out of the Middle Ages. The owner -- a husky, personable man named Max -showed us to an elegantly rustic room that faced a courtyard.

The lingering taste of our prosciutto di San Daniele made us crave more. We settled into a table at Cafe Longobardo, next to a graceful praying mantis that clung to an adjacent wicker chair. As we ate our prosciutto and mozzarella panini in this sun-dappled square, we relaxed into the mixture of Italian and German spoken around us. As the sun shifted, we thought it was a good time to explore Cividale's compact sights.

We crossed the imposing 15th century Ponte del Diavolo, a bridge believed to be built by Lucifer himself, and hoped the rushing currents of the limestone Natisone River below would not steal our souls. This frothy river -- which dances across rocks amid pine forests, cobblestone walls and a distant castle -- is a living landscape pastorale.

The Tempietto Longobardo, our main destination, required just a short walk through quiet streets and along a babbling brook. It's nestled in what felt like an Alpine oil painting, yet it was built over an entire neighborhood of Roman houses. Joe and I squeezed into the minuscule chapel and could smell the musty immovability of the ages. The six relief figures of "virgins and martyrs" above the arched altar - surrounded by intricately carved windows - survived an earthquake. This 8th century architectural masterpiece was restored in the 13th century and retains its silent, sacred grandeur. Not far away, a few cyclists were chatting at the entrance to a baptistery structure covered in weathered frescoes gradually being blotted out by the ravages of time.

On our way to Piazza del Duomo, we noticed a barricaded wooden door with a plaque that read "Ipogeo Celtico." A separate sign directed visitors to the adjoining Bar All'Ipogeo for a key. This was an odd little curiosity we couldn't pass up. We asked the friendly young blonde girl at the bar for the key and any brochures she might have.

"We don't have a lot of information on the Ipogeo Celtico," she replied in British-accented English. "It's believed to have been a burial chamber in the 3rd century. Later, the Romans and Lombards used it as a prison."

It sounded like we might be entering King Tut's tomb. Between the Devil's Bridge and this eerie catacomb, we didn't want to be prone to any sort of curses. We asked the barrista-historian if a guide would accompany us.

"Oh, no," she laughed. "It's very small. When you're done, just make sure to turn off the light and lock the door."

Then she turned around and finished frothing a pitcher of milk.

So Joe and I opened the creaky cavern door with the sort of key old-time jailers used to dangle from their belts. The door quickly slammed behind us, and we stood in total darkness. I let out a scream, which must have startled the patrons of Bar All'Ipogeo. But no one seemed bothered enough to come to our rescue. Joe calmly located an electrical box at the top of the stairs and felt for a switch. I was worried it might contain fuses and live wires. So I imagined us getting electrocuted inside the moldy confines of what may have been the headquarters of an ancient pagan cult.

Groping around in pitch blackness, Joe soon pulled an unseen lever that activated the lights. We held hands as we descended the clammy stone staircase accompanied only by the sound of dripping water. Platforms were hewn into the walls. Perhaps they once held rotting corpses now wholly disintegrated. The stairs led down to what could have been the set from The Pit and the Pendulum. Out of the protruding rocks emerged three carved heads: one a monstrous blob; another Dr. Frankenstein's Igor; the third a replica of the Scream mask. At least that's what they looked like to me. It's not clear whether these are natural rock formations or human carvings chiseled out of the chronically perspiring walls. Regardless, these eerie visages must have messed up the heads of prisoners, whose cells were located directly across from them - like looking into a metaphoric mirror of fate.

We were anxious to leave this creepy underground lair. I became paranoid that the lights might be on a timer and couldn't imagine being that far away from the switch amid those beastly sculptures. Needless to say, we welcomed the sunlight and walked briskly toward the 15th century Duomo - its gray-hued Renaissance façade looming above a statue of Julius Caesar. An impressive silver altarpiece clustered with a brigade of saints and archangels greets visitors. But I grew alarmed when I noticed wide fissures in the ceiling, not too far from more washed-out frescoes. An attached museum serves as a crash course in early-Christian art, with an emphasis on crude but vivid visual storytelling. The artists favored fish and other less recognizable sea creatures.

We then spent time in the Palladio-designed National Archaeological Museum. Each floor carried us through the different eras of Cividale's occupation. Roman relics (many decorated with entwined turtle doves) and busts (including one of a man with razor stubble) fill the ground floor. We traveled upwards toward the Lombards, viewing swords, dagger cases and ivory crucifixes found in Lombard tombs. A mosaic atrium had been transformed into a mausoleum constructed of ancient Jewish tombstone fragments.

Now inundated with Cividale's history, we felt the pull of the 21st century as we experienced problems trying to access our email from our phone. We stopped in a gift shop that happened to have a computer available. While logging on, I looked up at a shelf and saw a board game called "Longobardi" - the warriors on the cover (a combination of Vikings and Attila the Hun) glaring at me as they wielded axes and spears.

An aperitivo was in order. At the Enoteca Eleforte in Piazza Paolo Diacono we snacked on the area's specialty, bruschetta, and tasted some of the local wines that allowed us to  experience the vast characteristics of the regional grape - as subtle and quietly complex as the Friulian culture.

We spotted Max, the hotelier, in the piazza and asked if he could recommend an authentic restaurant. To our surprise, his favorites turned out to be closed on this particular night. So Joe and I wandered around and were drawn into the colorful folkloric atmosphere of Taverna Longobardo along the Ponte del Diavolo. Our long-haired waiter, who only needed a pointy helmet to make it onto the Longobardi board game cover, led us through a series of ornate rooms - every one of them empty - until we reached a tangerine orange-painted dining salon decorated with glistening wine and grappa bottles. A mantle displayed porcelain figurines of bloated cats, hippos and snails. Still, no one else was dining here, and it was well past 8 o'clock. We grew suspicious. Did the locals not like the food?

Perhaps, but we also seemed to have chosen an unusually slow night. We noticed that, unlike other parts of Italy where the ritualistic passeggiata keeps people of all ages parading around the piazza until midnight, the Friulians tend to turn in early. Our waiter, a bit reserved with a hint of nationalistic swagger, explained how an earthquake buried scores of valuable Lombard artifacts that have yet to be excavated. "There's a whole city underneath us," he announced as he brought us a taste of "frico," a local dish that's a cheese and potato pancake.

Our mushroom soup and risotto ai funghi porcini were fine. But our "Lombard-grilled" beef rubbed with herbs and black peppercorns was painfully tough - as if our waiter descended the Ipogeo Celtico and hacked off some beef jerky left over from the 3rd century. The restaurant redeemed itself with a "gubana" dessert (a fig and prune pastry flavored with grappa) and a local "picolit" dessert wine.

At 10 o'clock, Cividale's streets were silent. The full moon was wrapped in a black-velvet veil of clouds, and we slept soundly in our medieval inn breathing the same air as the town's once-formidable conquering nomadic tribes.

The next morning, we ate our breakfast at long wooden benches together with a small group of German businessmen. Our gracious older waiter brought us wafer-thin slices of prosciutto di San Daniele and the more Germanic Speck variety with warm bread. We could not contain our enthusiasm for the San Daniele cured ham. And when we checked out, the waiter presented us with a beautifully wrapped package of San Daniele and  Speck. In our hands, we held Cividale's mixed Latin and Teutonic identity.
END