Marano Lagunare

Marano Lagunare sits on a single fingertip of land at the mouth of the Stella river, completely surrounded by the Laguna di Marano and Grado — the largest lagoon in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and the only commune in the region that exists entirely inside lagoon waters. The town was a Roman port (Maranum, mentioned by Pliny), then a Patriarchate-of-Aquileia fishing town, then a Venetian fortified outpost from 1420 until the fall of the Republic in 1797. The Venetian period left the small Torre Millenaria at the harbour and a tight grid of pastel-coloured fishermen's houses around a single central piazza. The fishing fleet still works the lagoon daily — moeche soft-shell crabs, sea bass, and the local schie shrimp form the menu of every osteria — and the dialect spoken in town is a distinct Venetian variant that survived the centuries of Friulian-speaking villages around it. The Stella river estuary is a Natura 2000 wetland with reedbeds and birding hides; the Riserva Naturale Foci dello Stella sits across a short ferry hop from the harbour.