It seems that they saved the best for last here in my visit to the Monastery of Santa Maria in Valle in the northern Italian town of Cividale del Friuli. Most of the visit to the monastery was frankly not very interesting to me. The church looked too new. The choir, which looked old, wasn’t that interesting. In fact, I enjoyed the view of the Natisone river from the monastery more than the monastery itself, so far. However, the tour saved the best for last. I was led to an inconspicuous door which apparently leads to the star of the show.

The Lombard or Longobard Temple is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site listing Longobards in Italy, Places of Power. While there are seven sites in Italy which are under this listing, this one in Cividale del Friuli is the most important one. It is now the oratory of Santa Maria in Valle within the monastery. It is considered to be the best example of Lombard art. I wasn’t someone who is very knowledgeable in this kind of thing and to my untrained eyes it looks like art but I won’t be able to tell which is which. There are frescoes painted on the ceiling but you can tell that the frescoes were meant to cover more of the temple. Unfortunately, a lot of it was lost to time and only the one in the central nave is best preserved. It would have been a wonder to actually see how it looked like back then. Unfortunately, if there were no photos of them, there is no way to recreate them even through computer simulations.

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