Cemetery Crypt of San Michele

In 1976, there was a violent earthquake that shock Friuli. The seismic shock destroyed the city, located at the feet of Mount San Simeone, the place of the epicentre, and placed in danger one of the symbols of Venzone to which the population has always been very attached: the mummies. In 1647, the first mummy to be discovered was the one called “il Gobbo” (the Hunchback) which also immediately drew the attention of the soldiers of Napoleon who, during the French occupation in 1797, cut some strips of flesh from it as macabre souvenirs. Since their discovery, the mummies have been the objects of curiosity and of research. Nowadays, five mummies are exhibited to the public in the interred floor of San Michele. Thanks to new directions in historical and archaeological sciences, the mummies above all represent a patrimony of priceless anthropological interest that allows us to know comprehensively how the inhabitants of the Friuli of centuries gone by used to live.