When the Lombards entered Italy, in the sixth century, the first city they took and made the capital of a duchy was this one. Cividale has remained the place where most Lombard material in Italy is kept, and the archaeological museum is its main store: what you see here you do not see elsewhere.
What to see
The grave goods are the most important part: weapons, buckles, brooches, very thin gold crosses that were laid on the faces of the dead, ornaments and objects of daily use. They are materials that tell of a people who came from the north and settled here, and of how they mixed with those already present.
Then there are ivories, illuminated manuscripts and liturgical objects of the early middle ages, along with Roman material from the earlier town. The museum is in a sixteenth-century palace built for the representatives of Venice, attributed to Palladio, and the building alone is worth part of the ticket.
Visiting
The museum is in piazza del Duomo, in the centre of Cividale, half an hour by car from Udine; paid ticket, with a weekly closing day. An hour and a half.
Our editors' tip
Do the museum and the Lombard Tempietto on the same trip: the Tempietto is five minutes away on foot, above the river, and it is the only early medieval building in Italy with its stucco decoration still in place. First the objects, then the room in which those objects made sense: in two hours you cross a piece of history that school dismisses in half a page.