Cividale del Friuli historical timeline

For a town of eleven thousand people, Cividale has an unreasonable amount of history, and most of it is early.

Forum Iulii

Julius Caesar founded a market centre here in the first century BC, at the point where the route from the east came down out of the hills. The name spread outwards over the centuries until it covered the whole region, which is now called Friuli after it.

The Lombards

In 568 the Lombards entered Italy through these valleys, and their king made Cividale the seat of the first duchy, held by his nephew Gisulf. For two centuries it was a capital: the dukes of Friuli were the gatekeepers of the peninsula and repeatedly the most dangerous men in the kingdom.

The Patriarchs

In the eighth century the Patriarch of Aquileia moved his seat here, and Cividale remained the ecclesiastical centre of Friuli until the thirteenth century, when the patriarchs moved again to Udine.

Venice

Venice took the town with the rest of Friuli in 1420, and it settled into a long provincial quiet.

The First World War

Cividale was immediately behind the Isonzo front. After the rout at Caporetto in October 1917 — thirty kilometres up the valley — the retreating Italian army blew the Ponte del Diavolo, and the town was occupied for a year.

The books

The patriarchal library left the town an extraordinary residue, now in the archaeological museum: a fifth-century gospel book on which medieval pilgrims, including kings and queens, wrote their names, and the illuminated psalter that belonged to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.

The border century

After 1945 the frontier ran a few kilometres away and the Slovene-speaking valleys were watched closely by both states. Since Slovenia joined the European Union the crossings have simply stopped mattering.