In the heart of the disaster area, which roughly coincided with the area of the recent industrial development, employers and workers engaged in repair or rebuild factories and houses to keep the previously-won tasks, to support the pace of growth that had guaranteed them. The factory worken who underwent the difficult winter conditions of 1976 can be considered, from this point of view, as the heroes of the "reconstruction development". According to this guiding idea, to restore the factories and the jobs meant confirming the recent economic and social progress. The Region, through timely laws that demonstrate the intuition of its political leaders, interpreted these needs and energies, claimed priority for the reconstruction of factories and established through the mayors a direct relationship with the earthquake-stricken families for the repair and reconstruction of homes.

The renewed production and the rebuilt houses set the parameters for more ambitious goals. To complete the revival project it was necessary on the one hand to recover the physiognomy of the former Friuli, as well as also to confirm the significance of the cultural forces that had made it possible to overcome the emegency; on the other hand, to promote an infrastructure that gave an active role to the area itself and to reevaluate it in a progressive Italian and European context. The well-being needed a solid foundation. Schools, roads, railways would support the productive apparatus, only if the spirit of rebirth maintained its original character. Economic resources, as large as they might be, would not be enough in the event of a failure of the cultural context that kept alive the momentum of the revival.

The problem of memory, of traditional landscapes, was faced with virtually unlimited resources, especially by the State Superintendence for the cultural heritage. The Region collaborated with it by drawing its attention to more than fifteen hundred items considered as "unlisten" to complete the recovery of cultural heritage.

The medieval villages of Venzone and Gemona were rebuilt They respected the features of tradition, because they maintained the scale, size and style of the original artifacts. The reconstruction is noticeable, but it is valuable for the care with which it was conducted. It cannot be defined as a "historical falsehood" since it is a building complex whose stones, numbered and arranged in place, are the original ones. The cathedral of Gemona also tells in dramatic terms about the contradiction between what is original and what is rebuilt the exterior flaunts a perfectly finished Gothic facade with the imposing St. Christopher, who still looks at the medieval "cart street", while inside the irregularly inclined columns of the church evoke the twists and shudders on the bilding impressed by seismic forces.

The Tricesimo, Cassacco, Colloredo castles, the Osoppo fortress, but also the little churches of St. Agnes and All Saints in Ospedaletto, the Abbey of Moggio mark again the landscapes that the earthquake upset.

Restoration of important symbol didn’t s regard only the disaster area, but - for example - also the city of Udine. The castle, the church of Santa Maria, the house of Contadinanza, the Patriarchal Palace, the Basilica of Graces were renovated and consolidated. The duomo of Spilimbergo, the Longobard temple of Cividale, the church of San Daniele in Castello and the Zuglio one rediscovered their original features.

The expansion of the recovery to an area outside that the worst disasters ensured that the assertion of the Friuli cultural heritage was an essential condition of development of the full potential of the region. Only the growth of the whole could ensure success for the recovery of the part most affected by the earthquake. The historical consciousness as a reconstruction engine is implied in the transformation of the Regional Centre for Cataloguing of cultural heritage of Passariano, established in 1971 in Regional Centre for Cataloguing and Restoration of Cultural Property in the same 1976.

The schools for professional restorers tried to put into concrete action the preservation of the historical heritage. The Archive Superintendence meanwhile saved the municipal archives, sometimes rediscovering thir value, ordering and inventorying in the Udine and Trieste structures. A reconstruction-development called into question the whole region, involved the collaboration of parts not severely affected by the earthquake, renewed institutions that existed before the earthquake by using their energy and skills.

The complexity of the problem of the historical heritage can be measured by evaluating the restoration of churches destroyed by the earthquake, the reconstruction of the housing structure of the villages. The chapel of Molinis between Tarcento and Villafredda, which respects the proportions and the sobriety of traditional religiosity, is a happy exception. In other cases it has been determined by new structures the breaking of simplicity and less attention for what the shapes of the traditional sacrality expressed. Portis, which was constrained to relocate, has lost the historical relationship with the Tagliamento, and thus the significance and originality of the name.

These are inevitable contradictions between modern progress and the respect that identity required. Professionals and technicians could not realize a perfect balance between the two requirements everywhere, because the territorial upheaval showed them aspects that differed from time to time, since the pact that political and cultural forces had signed implied a certain tolerance for divergent interpretations and solutions.

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