Travel Guide Cividale Del Friuli

Alboino, king of the Lombards, arrived in 568 with his army on the borders of Italy and chose the small Roman municipality of Cividale as the capital of his kingdom. The Lombard vestiges are of great interest there. In 737, the patriarch of Aquileia, Callisto, settled in Cividale. Since then, on the first Sunday of January, the traditional messa dello spadone is celebrated in the Duomo: the officiant, with a feathered helmet on his head, blesses the assembly of the faithful, with a drawn sword in his right hand and a sacred missal in his left hand. Since 2011, Cividale is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO along with six other sites in the Italian peninsula under the heading: "The Lombards in Italy. Places of power (568-774 AD)". The municipality has bought the ancient monastery of the Benedictine nuns, which had become that of the Ursulines, but which had been deserted in the 1990s by the last four nuns present on the site. The city has undertaken a major restoration and development of the complex. We can already enjoy admiring some of the pieces, including an altar that has been incredibly illuminated. This small, peaceful and preserved town is banking on tourism following the Unesco classification and should indeed do well thanks to the attraction of its heritage, but also of a certain authenticity and the seduction of persistent traditions. Cividale is always in a strategic position, between two rivers, and 6 km from the border with Slovenia. Every year in July it hosts the cultural event Mittelfest, a festival of music, dance, film and street theater that brings together famous artists from Central Europe.