Borghi più belli d'Italia
Borghi più belli d'Italia in Friuli-Venezia Giulia
13 towns
Friuli-Venezia Giulia carries 13 of the Borghi più belli d'Italia towns we cover. They cluster in the Pordenone, Udine, and Gorizia provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Cividale del Friuli, Cervignano del Friuli, and Frisanco. 10 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Cividale del Friuli
Province: Udine · 138 m
The Lombard capital on the Natisone, founded as Forum Iulii by Julius Caesar, where an eighth-century chapel still holds six stucco saints.
Cervignano del Friuli
Province: Udine · 5 m
The capital of Bassa Friulana on the Ausa river, an inland river port for Aquileia in 181 BC and a railway junction since 1860.
Frisanco
Province: Pordenone · 415 m
A 572-resident commune in the Val Colvera whose frazione Poffabro, at 525 meters, became a model of Prealpine stone-and-wood vernacular architecture.
Gradisca d'Isonzo
Province: Gorizia · 32 m
A 1479 Venetian bastion on the right bank of the Isonzo, with seven towers, twenty-meter walls, and a Habsburg court inside.
Palmanova
Province: Udine · 26 m
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.
Sappada
Province: Udine · 1,250 m
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.
Sesto al Reghena
Province: Pordenone · 13 m
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 · 132 m
A 132-meter Friulian town on the Tagliamento, home since 1922 to the Scuola Mosaicisti, whose alumni made the Library of Congress mosaics.
Venzone
Province: Udine · 230 m
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.
Cordovado
Province: Pordenone · 15 m
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.
Fagagna
Province: Udine · 177 m
A 177-meter Friulian hill town northwest of Udine, fortified by Otto II in 983 and racing donkeys in the piazza since 1891.
Polcenigo
Province: Pordenone · 40 m
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.
Valvasone Arzene
Province: Pordenone · 57 m
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.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.
Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.
Abano Terme
Province: Padova
Europe's oldest thermal town on the Euganean Hills' eastern slope, where 80°C bromo-iodine springs have been drawing bathers since the eighth century BC.
Bosa
Province: Oristano
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.