Venzone

The earthquakes of 6 May and 15 September 1976 killed forty-seven people in Venzone and reduced much of the medieval centre to rubble. A petition signed by 645 residents backed reconstruction 'where it was and as it was'. For the cathedral alone, 8,000 shaped stones were catalogued before surviving originals were returned to their former positions; the work finished in 1995.

Five naturally preserved bodies can now be visited in the crypt of the cemetery chapel of San Michele. The oldest, known as the Hunchback, was discovered in 1647; fifteen of the twenty-one bodies then held in the chapel were recovered intact after the 1976 earthquake.

Trieste (TRS) is about a hundred kilometres by road. Venzone has a station on the Udine-Tarvisio line; check the current rail timetable before travelling.