Gothic windows and reinforced by four buttresses. The interior is divided into three cross-vaulted naves by two lines of mighty red marble columns having Flamboyant-Gothic capitals surmounted by high Gothic arches. On a lower level the crypt is in what was formerly a separate building: the chapel of Sts Michael and John the Baptist, a small, completely frescoed oratory (on the rear wall, St Michael archangel, St Christopher and a Crucifixion with Mary, John, Longinus and Stephen; a number of saints decorate the right wall and the entrance wall; on the ceiling, painted to resemble a starry sky, Christ benedicens, with the symbols of the evangelists). This cycle, which presumably was finished by the middle of the fourteenth century, is the work of Gemona painter Nicolò di Giacomo; a frescoed Virgin of Mercy signed by him is in the Church dei Templari in San Tomaso di Majano. Among the many works of art conserved in the cathedral there are: the baptismal font in the ferial chapel, originally a Roman sepulchral altar, dating from the first-second centuries AD, with early medieval bas-reliefs (ninth-tenth c.); the magnificent illuminated liturgical codices (thirteenth-fourteenth c.) purchased in Padua in the middle of the 14th century; the extraordinary monstrance by Nicolò Lionello, a masterpiece of church art created in 1434 for Santa Maria parish church; a wooden crucifix of the first half of the fifteenth century by the Friuli school, it was very badly damaged by the earthquake in 1976 and later became the symbol of Gemona’s rebirth; Assumption of the Virgin, a large painting by the Udine artist Gian Battista Grassi (1577).
    Leaving the cathedral we take Via Bini ­ where the first town, at the foot of the castle, was built ­ which leads to the Renaissance town hall. This was started in 1502 in the Veneto-Lombard style, the original plan being by Bartolomeo de Caprileis, called Bòton, an architect from Udine. Over the centuries several alterations and additions were made and it was rebuilt by anastylosis after the earthquake. One of its main features are the loggia’s three wide arches echoed by the three-light window on the upper floor.
    Other historical buildings along the same road include: Palazzo Gurisatti (fifteenth century) with a double-arched portico dominated by an elegant Flamboyant-Gothic three-light window; the Neo-Gothic home of the D’Aronco family (19th century) with characteristic corner balconies; the medieval Antonelli house (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries) faced with brickwork and double two-light windows; the grandiose Palazzo Elti, built in the fifteenth century by the aristocratic De Cramis family, later purchased in 1519 by Salzburg merchant Andreas Helt, who had it restored. This building now houses a museum whose collections include two early fifteenth century sculptures from the Salzburg area, respectively from the cathedral and shrine of Sant’Antonio; the Fantoni-Baldissera collection (paintings and sketches by mainly Austrian and German artists of the eighteenth century); paintings, sculptures and

jewellery from the civic collections and from Gemona churches that were destroyed and never rebuilt. Particular noteworthy are: Madonna and Child, painted by Cima da Conegliano in 1496, previously in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie; a painting by Pellegrino da San Daniele depicting the Madonna and Child between Sts Joseph and Elizabeth, dated around 1506 and originally in the same church as the previously-mentioned painting; six lacunars painted by Pomponio Amalteo in 1533 for the wooden caisson ceiling in the Church of San Giovanni Battista (destroyed).
    Among the buildings reconstructed philologically after the 1976 earthquake is the seventeenth-century Church of Santa Maria del Fossale and the Church of San Rocco built at the beginning of thesixteenth century; the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the shrine of Sant’Antonio were rebuilt along modern lines.
    Lastly, two important, previously unknown, cycles of paintings came to light after the earthquake. Original frescoes from the first half of the fourteenth century were found in the Antonelli house; these portray sacred subjects (Enthroned Virgin and Child; figures of saints) and secular scenes (two winged monsters with their necks intertwined, two harpies, drinkers, a hunting scene with “wild men”, a town under siege, characters in a playful attitude, etc.). Three layers of frescoes emerged in the Church of Ognissanti in Ospedaletto; after being detached for restoration a few fragments of the first layer (Crucifixion with the Magdalene at the foot of the cross, circa 1394-1401) and two panels of the third (Christ before Caiaphas, The marriage in Cana, ca. mid-fifteenth century) were mounted on fibreglass and repositioned in the church. The third, predominating, layer was repositioned on the side and rear walls; this layer was probably carried out by a folk painter after 1401 when the church was enlarged (episodes from the life of Christ; unidentifiable figures perhaps from the stories of St Ursula; saints, cardinals and bishops; a Last Judgement whose iconography reflects transalpine figurative traditions).
    Lying as it did on the only route between Italy and the countries of North-East Europe, from prehistoric times various settlements formed around Venzone: to the east of the present walled town there are traces of a castellar inhabited between the thirteenth and the eleventh century BC by early Veneto populations. Towards 500 BC the area was settled by the Celts, followed in the third century BC by the Carni (of Celtic stock) and lastly by the Romans who, in the first century BC, built a statio on the site of the present cathedral and, possibly, a castrum.
    Archaeological investigations inside the cathedral have revealed the presence of a place of worship probably built in the sixth century ­ thus confirming the continuity of settlements on the site ­ followed by the Lombard (seventh-eighth c.), Carolingian (ninth-tenth c.), Ottonian (tenth-eleventh c.) and thirteenth-century phases.
    The present Romanesque-Gothic cathedral of Sant’Andrea apostolo was started in 1300; the same Master John who was previously

(to be continued →)