The museum collection tells in rooms on the ground floor in the history of the city from the town hall of the roman age up to the period of Venetian domination. The stages are scanned by the splendid mosaics from the domus from letters carved in public inscriptions and by sculptures from churches and palaces of medieval Cividale. The noble floor hosts the rich Longobard section, an admirable sequence of objects coming from the necropolis of Cividale and his duchy which tells the charm and the particularities of the culture of the Lombards and handed down the importance of their contribution in the formation of the medieval Italy.
The Lapidary
exhibition on the ground floor tells the story of the urban center of Iulli Forum/Cividale declining the various stages of a millenary history in forms of stone. The fragments of sculptures and objects of liturgical furnishings exposed in the second section of the lapidary, together with masterpieces currently present the Christian Museum at the cathedral and in the “Tempietto Longobardo”, testify to the wealth of architectural decoration and furniture in the places of worship of Cividale between VI AND IX century. The last section of the lapidary of the museum is dedicated to the Cernazai collection. Peter Cernazai (1804-1858) was a cultured and refined collector active in Udine in the first half of the nineteenth century. The collection came to the museum appears rather heterogeneous, composed of materials coming from Rome (for the most part funerary slabs of colombarium) and from the area the dalmatic (Issa, Salona and Iader).
The Longobard necropolis
in the funerary archeology of the longobard age in Friuli is dedicated almost the entire floor of the Museum. The exposure is preceded by panels that illustrate the path from Germany to Italy of the Germanic people and the historical context and geography in which occurred the great movements of populations barbaric after the end of the Roman Empire of the West. In the central hall is the exhibition dedicated to the Necropolis on the hill of S. Mauro, the northernmost among those that surround a north Cividale, and constitutes the introduction. Has been recreated ideally a sector of burial. The funerary complex exposed, characteristic of the cultural model longobardo, and dating back to the early stages of immigration in Italy, are for the most part of an exceptional richness and bear witness to the high level of social group buried here: warriors and knights of high rank deposited with the entire military equipment, Dame of social level high with objects of ornament in gold, silver and precious stones which are typical of the traditional costume already attested in Pannonia; children with kits including weapons and traditional jewels.
museoarcheocividale@beniculturali.it