Cercivento

Cercivento lies in Carnia, where the Valcalda runs into the valley of the But, and the wind gave it its name: popular etymology derives it from circum venti, surrounded by winds, and indeed there is a compass rose on the municipal arms. But those arms say two other things as well: the cock recalls that the church depended on the abbey of Moggio, founded by monks of the order of Saint Gall who came from the Swiss canton of that name, and the two background colours stand for Cercivento di Sopra and Cercivento di Sotto, which were two separate comuni until Napoleon joined them. In 1692, the year of the flood, a landslide buried the hamlet of Centa, which stood behind today's cemetery.

The name of Cercivento, though, is bound to a very sad event: on the first of July 1916, behind the church, four Alpini of the eighth regiment were shot, declared guilty of mutiny in the face of the enemy — Silvio Ortis, Giovanni Battista Corradazzi, Basilio Matiz and Angelo Massaro. It is known as the decimation of Cercivento. The village also has things that go on, however: the Farie dal Checo, the blacksmith's forge recorded as early as 1426 and put out of use by a flood of the But, has been restored and since 1990 works again, open to visitors; and since 2011 the house fronts have filled with mosaics and paintings on religious subjects, ten of them, in the square, by the mosaic school of Spilimbergo.