Venzone

Venzone sits in the upper Tagliamento valley, ninety kilometers northwest of Trieste. The hexagonal walls, double-built and eight meters high, were started in 1258 by Glizoio of Mels and circled by a moat and fifteen towers. The town survived intact into the twentieth century, the best-preserved walled town in Friuli.

On 6 May 1976 the Friuli earthquake leveled it: forty-seven residents died, the duomo collapsed, almost every house came down. The reconstruction took the rare path of anastilosis, recovering each fallen stone and putting it back where it had been. The Duomo di Sant'Andrea Apostolo, erected in 1308, was reassembled by 1990.

In the crypt of the San Michele Chapel are five of the mummies of Venzone, naturally preserved corpses found from the 1600s onward, their preservation still unexplained. The town was voted Borgo dei Borghi 2017 by the RAI program Kilimangiaro.