Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Aquileia

Province: Udine

A village of 3,128 on a Roman capital of 100,000, where the largest paleochristian mosaic floor in the West runs under a Romanesque basilica.

Cervignano del Friuli

Province: Udine

The capital of Bassa Friulana on the Ausa river, an inland river port for Aquileia in 181 BC and a railway junction since 1860.

Cividale del Friuli

Province: Udine

The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.

Cordovado

Province: Pordenone

A 15-meter Friulian village in the Pordenone plain, fortified by the bishops of Concordia as their summer seat and described in Ippolito Nievo's Confessions.

Cormons

Province: Gorizia

The capital of the Collio wine zone at the foot of the Friulian-Slovenian hills, with a statue of Emperor Maximilian I on its main square.

Fagagna

Province: Udine

A 177-meter Friulian hill town northwest of Udine, fortified by Otto II in 983 and racing donkeys in the piazza since 1891.

Forni di Sotto

Province: Udine

Carnia's Dolomite gateway — a 548-resident alpine borgo at 791m at the head of the Val Tagliamento, gateway to the Parco Naturale delle Dolomiti Friulane (UNESCO Dolomites), with Borgo Autentico mark, a centro almost entirely rebuilt after the 1944 German wartime burning, and direct access to the Forni Avoltri-Sappada ski + hiking circuit.

Frisanco

Province: Pordenone

A 572-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.

Gorizia

Province: Gorizia

Border city below the Julian Alps, divided from Nova Gorica by a 1947 wall and rejoined as European Capital of Culture 2025.

Gradisca d'Isonzo

Province: Gorizia

A 1479 Venetian bastion on the right bank of the Isonzo, with seven towers, twenty-meter walls, and a Habsburg court inside.

Grado

Province: Gorizia

An Adriatic island town inside a 90-square-kilometer lagoon, refuge of the Aquileian patriarchs after 568 and a Habsburg bathing resort thirteen centuries later.

Marano Lagunare

Province: Udine

A fishing town on its own pastel-coloured harbour at the heart of the Laguna di Marano — the only Friulian commune set entirely inside the lagoon, with a working fleet, an Aquileian Venetian past, and a still-strict dialect of its own.

Muggia

Province: Trieste

The only town on the Istrian peninsula still inside Italy, a small Venetian port on the Gulf of Trieste five kilometers from the Slovenian border.

Palmanova

Province: Udine

A nine-pointed Venetian star fortress founded 7 October 1593, designed as a perfect Renaissance city and finished, in three phases, under Napoleon in 1813.

Polcenigo

Province: Pordenone

A 40-meter village at the foot of the Carnic Prealps where the Livenza rises, neighbour to the UNESCO Palù pile-dwelling site occupied since 4900 BC.

San Daniele del Friuli

Province: Udine

• 🍖Prosciutto di San Daniele DOP

Italy's prosciutto capital — a 7,900-resident hill town in the Friuli morainic amphitheatre where the Tagliamento valley's south winds meet the alpine downdraughts, producing the San Daniele DOP raw-cured ham (31 producers, 14-month minimum cure) and where Pellegrino da San Daniele's 1497–1522 frescoes inside Sant'Antonio Abate are the regional Renaissance set-piece.

San Dorligo della Valle-Dolina

Province: Trieste

A Slovene-speaking Karst commune ten kilometers from Trieste, with its own valley, its own wine, and a canyon Roman aqueducts once crossed.

San Vito al Tagliamento

Province: Pordenone

A medieval Tagliamento-plain town inside three rings of moats and three towers, where the Renaissance painter Pomponio Amalteo worked from 1536 until 1588.

Sappada

Province: Udine

A German-speaking alpine village at 1,250 meters near the source of the Piave, settled from East Tyrol in the eleventh century and Italian since 1852.

Sauris

Province: Udine

A 1,212-meter German-speaking island in the Carnic Alps, second-highest commune in Friuli, where Tyrolean settlers founded the village around the thirteenth century.

Sesto al Reghena

Province: Pordenone

A 730s Benedictine abbey on the Reghena, ravaged by Magyars in 899, refortified in the tenth century, and still the town hall today.

Spilimbergo

Province: Pordenone

A 132-meter Friulian town on the Tagliamento, home since 1922 to the Scuola Mosaicisti, whose alumni made the Library of Congress mosaics.

Trieste

Province: Trieste

The Adriatic port the Habsburgs built as their window on the sea, an Italian regional capital still arguing in four languages on the Slovenian border.

Udine

Province: Udine

The historic capital of Friuli, built around a man-made castle hill, the second home of the painter Giambattista Tiepolo.

Valvasone Arzene

Province: Pordenone

A medieval borgo at 57 meters on the Tagliamento's right bank, organized around a castle and a Duomo with a 1532 Italian-built organ.

Venzone

Province: Udine

A 230-meter walled medieval town in the Tagliamento valley, leveled by the 1976 earthquake and rebuilt stone by stone, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.