Mura medievali di Venzone

Venzone's defences form one of Friuli's few medieval wall circuits still traceable around their full course: a double ring begun in 1258, fronted by a moat and studded with towers. Damaged by war, roadworks and earthquake, the walls were reconstructed.

Why it matters

The regional cultural heritage catalogue describes Venzone's defensive system as the only example in the territory of a wall circuit from the 1200s that has come down to us complete in its layout, even though large parts of it are rebuilt. The circuit encloses the town in an irregular hexagon about 1,300 metres around. Its sequence — outer earthwork, ring road, moat, barbican and main wall — remains legible. Begun in 1258 under Glizoio di Mels against Gemona, the fortification shaped Venzone's urban form: fourteen internal blocks and gates at the cardinal points.

What to notice

A broad moat, supplied in siege by water from the nearby Venzonassa stream, ran before the first curtain, a raised earthwork carrying the second, taller ring. The main wall averages eight metres high and 1.5 metres thick, faced in rough-dressed local limestone; sixteen towers once punctuated it, mostly rectangular, with a polygonal tower to the south. Three towers stood above town gates with drawbridges. A stone plaque near the eastern gate records repairs in 1571; traces show that the walls were raised by about 2.2 metres in 1470 against the Turkish threat.

Context and history

The circuit's history is a record of every frontier anxiety of Friuli. Built from 1258 by the Mels family against Gemona, it was besieged and taken in 1309 by the patriarch's army; the Duke of Carinthia was forced to demolish the walls and rebuilt them the same year, probably raising the eastern gate-tower. Reinforcements in 1336 proved useless against the earthquake of 25 January 1348. From 1470 the walls were heightened against Turkish raids; works in 1571 cost one tower, and seventeenth-century repairs added arrow slits and replaced the drawbridges with masonry bridges — a lost plaque of 1646 marked them "against the Turks". In 1833 the Austrian road administration pulled down two of the gates for the new Pontebbana road; in 1920 a fourth gate opened to the west. An Allied bombardment on 28 December 1944 destroyed a long stretch north of the eastern gate. After decades of neglect the monument office restored the surviving towers in the 1950s, and after the 1976 earthquake the whole circuit was rebuilt in stages: gate and tower of San Genesio in 1977-1979, the remaining walls between 1982 and 1986, and the moat walls from 1990.