Lombard Cividale del Friuli, from the Tempietto to the Ponte del Diavolo

Getting there

From Udine you go east on state road 54, through Remanzacco, and arrive at Cividale from the plain, with no climbs: it is a wide road, fine for any motorhome. The motorhome does not go into the centre; you leave it at the municipal area, which has services and is good for the night too, or by day in the large free car park of the old station.

• The Cividale motorhome area, at via Istituto Tecnico Agrario 3, gps 46.09611, 13.42138, belongs to the Comune and is open all year round: sixteen bays in an enclosure with a barrier and cameras, with electricity, water filling, emptying, toilets also for disabled people, hot showers, a sink for the dishes and wi-fi. According to the TurismoFVG listing, in 2026 parking costs 20 euros a day, filling and emptying only 8 euros with at most one hour, and the tourist tax 30 cents a day. You enter, leave and pay with the InArea app, registering with a credit card and scanning the code at the barrier: it is worth installing it and registering before you arrive. The code for the toilets arrives by email. It is next to the municipal swimming pool and near the supermarkets, without shade; the centre is about ten minutes away on foot. In 2026 travellers paid 20.30 euros a night, with the tax, and found the showers clean and with hot water. Telephone 0432 699083, areacamper@unionenuotofriuli.it
• The old station car park, in viale Libertà, gps 46.09545, 13.42587, is a large free open space next to the former station, which today houses the Museo della Grande Guerra, the Great War museum, five minutes on foot from the centre and near a supermarket. It has no services. Between 2025 and 2026 travellers also spent the night there, quietly, with a little noise from the road; the bays are narrow for a motorhome longer than six and a half metres
• By train, without moving the motorhome from Udine: the line of the Ferrovie Udine Cividale is closed for extraordinary maintenance works, and according to the operator, with the winter timetable in force from 14 September 2026, the service is run entirely with replacement buses, in a little over half an hour. In Udine the buses leave from viale Europa Unita 22-24, in front of the railway station; in Cividale they arrive at the station in viale Libertà. During the works bicycles cannot be carried. The ticket is not bought from Trenitalia: it is bought at the line's ticket outlets. Public relations office 0432 581844, Monday to Thursday from 8:30 to 17:00 and on Fridays from 8:30 to 12:30

Practical information

The day you choose matters more than the hour: the archaeological museum closes on Mondays, the Christian museum opens only Wednesday to Sunday, and in winter the Tempietto closes on Tuesdays; the Celtic Hypogeum can be visited only on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Start from the Tempietto, go down to the Ponte del Diavolo, and finish in piazza del Duomo with the two museums.

Contacts

Where it is

Cividale del Friuli · Friuli-Venezia Giulia

You set off from

Notes

• The Tempietto longobardo and the monastery of Santa Maria in Valle, at via Monastero Maggiore 34, according to the Tempietto's website in 2026, from 1 April to 31 October are open every day, Sundays and public holidays included, from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 14:00 to 18:00; from 1 November to 31 March from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 14:00 to 17:00, closed on Tuesdays, but open on Shrove Tuesday and on the first Tuesday after Christmas. Closed on 25 December and on the morning of 1 January; last entry is half an hour before closing. The ticket costs 6 euros, 5 euros from 18 to 25, 1.50 euros from 8 to 18 and for students up to 25, and it is free under 8 and with the FVGcard; with two paying adults underage children go in free; online, on Vivaticket, there is a one-euro booking fee
• The combined tickets, again according to the Tempietto's website in 2026: monastery, Tempietto, Museo archeologico nazionale and Museo cristiano together 15 euros, reduced 9 euros, children and students 3 euros; monastery, Tempietto and Palazzo de Nordis with the Galleria de Martiis 10 euros; monastery, Tempietto and the Centro internazionale Vittorio Podrecca, the puppet museum, 7 euros
• Inside the Tempietto: you enter by a side door, through a medieval room that served as a sacristy, and arrive in the presbytery with three small vaulted aisles; on the other side a square hall, tall, with a cross vault. Above the entrance arch stand the six female figures in stucco, hieratic, with haloes, almost life-size: perhaps six saints, but who they are is not known, and they were probably sculpted by craftsmen from Syria or Palestine. In the lunettes remain the eighth-century frescoes, a Christ giving his blessing between the archangels Michael and Gabriel and a Madonna and Child, among the most beautiful paintings of that century; along the walls run the wooden choir stalls. You leave by the walkway suspended over the Natisone, through which nineteenth-century visitors used to enter
• The monastery route includes the refectory, the cloister with the archaeological excavation area, the Amelio Tagliaferri picture gallery on the first floor, with works by artists of the region and exhibitions, the nuns' cells of the early eighteenth century, each with its iron bed and kneeler, and the Belvedere vineyard. There is also the Ursulines' nativity scene, with figurines whose heads and hands are of wax and with Friulian names, Iustin, Agnul, Checo, which scholars date to 1860-1870. The monastery has an app for the visit, Monastero Tempietto CIPS
• The Museo archeologico nazionale, in piazza del Duomo, in the Palazzo dei Provveditori veneti, the palace of the Venetian governors, according to the Ministry of Culture in 2026 is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 19:00, with the ticket office open until 18:00, and closed on Mondays; the ticket costs 6 euros, reduced 2 euros. Its heart is the Lombard collection: the grave goods of the tombs of Cividale and its territory, swords, shields, brooches and pendants of amber and glass, the so-called tomb of Gisulf, the only Lombard princely tomb in Italy to have come down to us intact, and a collection of Lombard gold coins that the Ministry says is second only to that of the British Museum. On the ground floor the Roman Forum Iulii, with mosaics and inscriptions, and the first-century necropolis of Borgo di Ponte; below, an archaeological area. Telephone 0432 700700
• The Museo cristiano e Tesoro del Duomo, the MuCris, at via Giovanni Battista Candotti 1, next to the Duomo, according to its website in 2026 opens Wednesday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 18:00 from April to September, and until 17:00 from October to March; on Mondays and Tuesdays it opens only for groups of more than five people, on request. The ticket costs 6 euros, groups 5 euros, students 2 euros. In the first room, Lombard art: the altar of Duke Ratchis, carved in the eighth century with Christ in glory among the angels, the Visitation and the Adoration of the Magi, and the baptistery of the patriarch Callistus, the octagonal font with its canopy on columns. Then the cathedral treasury, from the eighth to the sixteenth century, with the reliquary of San Donato, a picture gallery with canvases attributed to Pordenone and to Veronese, and a room of vestments with the Madonna Odigitria
• The Duomo of Santa Maria Assunta, in piazza del Duomo, was rebuilt from the middle of the fifteenth century by Bartolomeo delle Cisterne; in 1502 a column gave way and brought down a large part of the church, and Pietro Lombardo rebuilt it, between Venetian Gothic and Renaissance. On the high altar is the altarpiece of the patriarch Pellegrino II, a hundred and twenty-three plates of gilded silver with the Madonna, the archangels and twenty-five saints, one of the masterpieces of Italian medieval goldsmithing; above the portal, the wooden equestrian monument to Marcantonio da Manzano, from 1621. On the same square are the Palazzo comunale, the town hall, and Palazzo de Nordis
• The Ponte del Diavolo has two different arches, of 22 and 18 metres, 22.5 metres high above the Natisone, and the pier in the middle resting on a natural boulder in the riverbed. The legend says that the devil built it in one night in exchange for the soul of the first to cross it, and that his mother carried the boulder for the pier in her apron; the people of Cividale tricked him by sending a dog across first, or a cat, depending on who tells it. From the bridge you look down at the green water, and from the banks you see the Tempietto on the cliff above the river
• The Ipogeo celtico, a few steps from the Ponte del Diavolo, is an underground chamber dug into the rock on several levels, shaped like a K: a steep staircase goes down to the central room, from which three corridors with niches and benches branch off, and on the walls are three great carved masks. What it was for is not known: for some it was a Celtic tomb, for others a Roman prison. According to Cividale's tourist page it can be visited on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, with the guide, with departures from the Informacittà, at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 14:00, 15:00, 16:00 and 17:00; the ticket, 5 euros and 1 euro from 8 to 18 and for students up to 25, free under 8, is sold only at the Informacittà
• The Informacittà, the tourist office, is at piazza del Duomo 5: telephone 0432 710460, informacitta@cividale.net
• The medieval house, called the oldest house in Cividale or the goldsmith's house, is from the middle of the fourteenth century, built on an older tower: it was a goldsmith's workshop, and it has become one again, with a jeweller's shop. You look at it from outside
• Piazza Paolo Diacono bears the name of the historian of the Lombards, and in 1874 the so-called tomb of Gisulf, today in the archaeological museum, was found here. From piazza del Duomo, corso Paolino d'Aquileia goes down to the bridge; on the other side, Borgo San Pietro and the church of San Pietro ai Volti
• Gubana is the cake of the Natisone Valleys and of Cividale: a leavened dough rolled up in a spiral around a filling of walnuts, raisins, pine nuts and dried fruit, which is eaten in slices, often soaked in grappa or slivovitz. Strucchi are the little parcels with the same filling. In the centre Dorbolò sells it, at largo Boiani 10, behind the Duomo; in viale Libertà there is the Vogrig bakery, and the Ducale pastry shop also makes a Cividale gubana of puff pastry
• Il Baule del Diavolo, the devil's trunk, the Pro Loco's market of old and used things, is held on the fourth Sunday of the month, from 8:00 to 20:00, in piazza del Duomo, largo Boiani and piazza Foro di Giulio Cesare, with a corner reserved for children selling their toys
• On 6 January the Messa dello Spadone, the Mass of the great sword, is celebrated in the Duomo: the deacon reads the Gospel with a plumed helmet on his head and the great sword unsheathed in his hand, recalling the investiture of the patriarch Marquard von Randeck, who entered Cividale in 1366; after the Mass the historical procession crosses the Ponte del Diavolo. In 2026 the Mass was at 10:30 and the procession at 11:45. In July Mittelfest, the festival of theatre, music and dance of Mitteleuropa, in 2027 from 16 to 25 July; in August the Palio di San Donato, with archery and crossbow contests between the districts, in 2026 from 21 to 23 August. At Easter children play Trùc, rolling coloured hard-boiled eggs down a sand track
• After Cividale: the road climbs into the Natisone Valleys, towards San Pietro al Natisone, the cave of San Giovanni d'Antro and the Matajur, and to the south-east, towards Castelmonte, the sanctuary on the mountain

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