
The Town Hall
In the center of Cividale del Friuli, in front of the Duomo and in the square that bears the same name, stands the Town Hall.
It is known that as early as 1296 there was a Town House in this area, which was then modified in the fifteenth century and rebuilt between 1545 and 1588. However, the current appearance of the building is different from that of then. To access the upper floor, an external staircase was used, placed high up, where public notices were usually posted or sentences of condemnation were read.
In 1936, during a major transformation, this external staircase was demolished.
The building has a portico with ogival arches at the lower entrance. The windows on the first floor, on the facade facing Largo Boiani, are of the single and double lancet type. Here there is also a baroque frame and the bust of Domenico Mocenigo, Venetian Provveditore, who distinguished himself greatly during the plague of 1682. On the facade facing the Duomo, there is a bas-relief with the Lion of San Marco, with an epigraph from 1560, and lower down a plaque commemorating the visit of Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1816. The modern part of the town hall, on the other hand, was built between 1966 and 1970. In the beams of the loggia, restored in 1958, the coats of arms of the noble families of Cividale are painted. On the wall, there are also two plaques dedicated to Giuseppe Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele II, with their portraits in relief medallions.
In the inner courtyard, accessible under the loggia during the hours of the municipal offices, are the remains of a Roman house from the 1st-2nd century, discovered in 1938. Of this Roman house, seven rooms have been identified, and the most visible one has a mosaic floor with very well-preserved black and white tiles.
Inside the town hall, in the council chamber, large portraits of Venetian Provveditori are preserved, and in two rooms there are frescoes made by the Cividale artist Francesco Chiarottini. On another wall, there is a mosaic depicting a battle scene of the Lombards, a work by the Udine artist Gianni Borta from 1971.
To commemorate the founder of the city, Gaius Julius Caesar, in 1935 a bronze statue was placed in front of the main facade, a copy of a marble statue from the Trajan era located in the Capitoline Hill in Rome.