The 6 best towns you can reach by train in the province of Udine
The province of Udine runs from lagoon flats up to the Julian and Carnic Alps, and the railway climbs with it. On the plain the light is wide and the fields are maize and vines, Friulano and Refosco, with frico and cjarsons on the menus and San Daniele ham cured a short way west. Further north the houses turn to grey river stone and the mountains close in, and winter arrives properly, with snow on the ridges above the tracks. Spring and early autumn are the kindest seasons for walking between a station and a piazza.
Most people arriving in this corner of Italy point themselves at Trieste, and reasonably so: the Habsburg waterfront, the coffee houses, the castle on the karst above the gulf. It is one train ride from the border and it absorbs almost all of the region's visitors, which is why its central cafés are full through summer and its seafront promenade busier still. The city rewards the trip. It also means the rest of Friuli Venezia Giulia is quieter than its rail network deserves.
The same lines that feed Trieste keep going inland and upward, and that is where these towns sit. Roman basilicas and mosaic floors near the old lagoon port, a Lombard capital on the Natisone with its Devil's Bridge, a star-shaped Venetian fortress town on the plain, and a stone village under the mountains rebuilt after the earthquake. We have confirmed each one is reachable without a car.
Of the 12 communes we have mapped in the province of Udine, 6 qualify as towns you can reach by train: we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. The smallest, Venzone, has 1,939 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best hidden towns you can reach by train in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and The prettiest villages you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Udine.
Venzone
Why visit Venzone
Venzone sits at 230 meters in the upper Tagliamento valley, ninety kilometers northwest of Trieste. The hexagonal walls, double-built and eight meters high, were started in 1258 by Glizoio of Mels and circled by a moat and fifteen towers.
The town survived intact into the twentieth century, the best-preserved walled town in Friuli. On 6 May 1976 the Friuli earthquake leveled it: forty-seven residents died, the duomo collapsed, almost every house came down.
The reconstruction took the rare path of anastilosis, recovering each fallen stone and putting it back where it had been. The Duomo di Sant'Andrea Apostolo, erected in 1308, was reassembled by 1990.
In the crypt of the San Michele Chapel are five of the mummies of Venzone, naturally preserved corpses found from the 1600s onward, their preservation still unexplained. The town was voted Borgo dei Borghi 2017 by the RAI program Kilimangiaro.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Venzone
- Duomo di Sant'Andrea Apostolo. Cathedral built in 1308, destroyed by the 1976 earthquake and reassembled stone by stone by 1990 using the original blocks.
- Cinta muraria. Hexagonal double walls eight meters high, started in 1258 by Glizoio of Mels, surrounded by moat and fifteen defensive towers.
- Mummie di Venzone. Five naturally mummified bodies preserved in the crypt of the San Michele Chapel, found from the 1600s onward, cause of preservation still unknown.
How to get to Venzone
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Udine is roughly 41 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the window when the Tagliamento valley is reliably warm and the walls show best against green slopes; winter brings cold air sinking off the Carnic Alps and shortened hours at the duomo and mummy crypt. The Festa della Zucca in late October stages the centro storico as a medieval village and draws crowds from across Friuli. July and August can be hot at midday; the valley cools sharply after sundown.
Aquileia
Why visit Aquileia
Aquileia sits at five meters above sea level on the Friuli plain, ten kilometers inland from the Adriatic at the head of the Grado lagoon. Rome founded it as a military colony in 181 BC.
By the second century AD it held close to 100,000 people, was the capital of Augustus's Regio X, and ranked among the nine great cities of the empire. Attila's Huns sacked it in 452, the population scattered to the lagoon islands, and the surface town never recovered.
The Roman city below is largely unexcavated, which makes Aquileia, in UNESCO's words, the most complete example of an Early Roman city in the Mediterranean. Above it, Patriarch Poppo rebuilt the basilica in 1031 over a fourth-century church.
Its floor is the largest paleochristian mosaic in the Western world, 760 square meters of fish, birds, jonah and the whale, uncovered by archaeologists in 1909. The 73-meter campanile uses stone quarried from the Roman amphitheater.
The Patriarchate of Aquileia survived until 1751.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Aquileia
- Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta. Patriarch Poppo's eleventh-century basilica over a fourth-century church, with a 760-square-meter paleochristian mosaic floor uncovered in 1909.
- Campanile di Poppo. Free-standing 73-meter bell tower built in the eleventh century with stone quarried from the Roman amphitheater, raised again in the fourteenth.
- Foro Romano. Excavated section of the Roman forum along the Via Sacra, with the bases of columns and reused capitals from the second century AD.
How to get to Aquileia
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Udine is roughly 43 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the working season for Aquileia. The basilica is open daily, the archaeological park stays light until late, and the lagoon at Grado five kilometers south is swimmable. July and August are hot and humid on the plain, often pushing above thirty-two degrees, and the mosaic floor is the coolest room in town.
Palmanova
Why visit Palmanova
Palmanova stands at 26 meters on the Friuli plain, between Udine and the Adriatic, on ground that in 1593 was open country twenty kilometers from the Habsburg border. The Venetian Republic chose the feast of Santa Giustina to found it, and built the geometry on Marcantonio Barbaro's design: nine points radiating from a six-sided center, three ring streets running concentric to the walls, ramparts angled so each point covers the one beside it.
The town has no separate old and new quarter, no upper and lower half. It is one plan, laid down whole and then filled in slowly: the piazza paved in 1602, the first ring of bastions closed in 1623, the second between 1658 and 1690, the third under a different army entirely between 1806 and 1813.
Venice began the design, an emperor finished it, and the interval between the two is longer than most towns take to form by accident. The city never had to defend itself in earnest.
What was built as a machine for war became, over three centuries and two occupations, simply a shape. Everything the town now shows a visitor, the star, the gates, the ring roads, is the residue of a defense that was never used.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Palmanova
- Piazza Grande. Hexagonal square laid out in 1602, six sides facing six radiating streets, ringed by the Duomo Dogale, the Loggia della Gran Guardia, and six bronze statues of the founding Provveditori.
- Duomo Dogale. Commissioned 1603, finished 1636, attributed to Scamozzi and Longhena. Baroque facade fronting a single Venetian nave, standing at the piazza's edge.
- Cinta muraria. The rings can still be walked in sequence: the 1623 line, the 1690 line, and the outer 1813 line, each built to a different generation of cannon range.
How to get to Palmanova
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Udine is roughly 29 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Palmanova rewards. The fortress walls and the glacis around them are walkable in the cool, the Piazza Grande sits in shade by mid-afternoon, and the historical reenactment A.D. 1615 fills the centro in early September with Venetian-era costume drills. July and August push past thirty-three degrees on the open plain and the hexagonal piazza, fully exposed, becomes one of the hotter squares in the region between noon and four.
Cividale del Friuli
Why visit Cividale del Friuli
Cividale del Friuli sits at 138 meters on the right bank of the Natisone, fifteen kilometers from Udine and close enough to the Slovenian border that the river marks it. Julius Caesar founded the place as Forum Iulii in the first century BC, the name that eventually gave Friuli its own.
In 568 the Lombard king Alboin made it the capital of his first Italian duchy, and the Patriarchate of Aquileia later moved its seat here for four centuries. The Tempietto Longobardo, an eighth-century palatine chapel, holds six stucco female saints carved around 760, the best-preserved sculpture of the Lombard age in Europe.
It is one of seven sites in the UNESCO serial nomination Longobardi in Italia. The Ponte del Diavolo, begun in 1442, spans the Natisone gorge in two asymmetrical arches.
The Palio di San Donato fills the streets in late August, and Mittelfest brings Central European theater and music to the piazzas every July.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Cividale del Friuli
- Tempietto Longobardo. Eighth-century palatine chapel in the Monastero di Santa Maria in Valle, with six stucco female saints in high relief, UNESCO-listed since 2011.
- Ponte del Diavolo. Stone bridge over the Natisone gorge, begun in 1442 on two asymmetrical arches resting on a central rock outcrop.
- Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta. Fifteenth-century cathedral with the Pala di Pellegrino II, a twelfth-century gilded silver altarpiece, and an attached Museo Cristiano.
How to get to Cividale del Friuli
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Udine is roughly 26 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months when the Natisone valley shows best, with green hills, mild evenings, and the Slovenian border country open for walking. July brings Mittelfest and August the Palio di San Donato, so the centro storico fills with theater crowds and historical pageant. Both months can push past thirty degrees, though 138 meters of elevation and the river keep nights cooler than the Friulian plain. Palio di San Donato falls in August.
Cervignano del Friuli
Why visit Cervignano del Friuli
Cervignano del Friuli sits at five meters on the lower Friuli plain, eight kilometers north of Aquileia and forty from Trieste. The town's origin is tied to Aquileia's founding in 181 BC: the Ausa, a short river that rises in karst springs and reaches the lagoon, served as a service port for the Roman colony, and the anchor in the comune's coat of arms still records that function.
The eleventh-century abbey dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo placed the village under the monastery of Aquileia. Venice took it in 1420, the Habsburgs retook it in 1521 with the Treaty of Worms, and it remained Austrian until World War I.
The railway to Trieste opened in 1860 and the station became one of the principal stops on the Vienna-Trieste line, which is why Cervignano grew faster than the older centers around it. Today, with 13,573 residents, it is the largest commune of the Bassa and the administrative anchor between Palmanova, Aquileia, and Grado.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Cervignano del Friuli
- Duomo dei Santi Michele e Adalberto. Modern cathedral consecrated in 1964 on the site of the medieval abbey church, dedicated to the archangel and to the missionary saint of Prague.
- Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo. 1780 parish church on the former Benedictine abbey footprint, with a single nave and a Baroque altar from the eighteenth century.
- Fiume Ausa. Short spring-fed river running through the centro, the historic inland port that linked Cervignano to Aquileia and the Adriatic in Roman times.
How to get to Cervignano del Friuli
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Udine is roughly 31 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the right window in Cervignano. The plain is green, the cycle path along the Ausa runs all the way to Grado, and the temperature still leaves the centro walkable at three in the afternoon. July and August push into thirty-three degrees with high humidity coming off the lagoon; the centro empties between two and six.
Udine
Why visit Udine
Udine sits at 113 meters in the center of the Friulian plain, raised on a single man-made hill that legend assigns to Attila's army. The city is documented from 983, when Emperor Otto II donated the castle to the Patriarchs of Aquileia.
By the twelfth century the patriarchs had moved their residence here, and for four hundred years Udine served as capital of the Patria del Friuli before Venice took the city in 1420 and governed it until 1797. The hill and the square below it still read as two distinct centers: the castle above, rebuilt after the 1511 earthquake, looking down on the civic and religious cluster of the Piazza della Libertà, the Duomo, and the patriarchs' palace.
From May 1915 to October 1917 the city was the seat of the Italian military command and was nicknamed Capitale della Guerra. A town built twice over as a seat of power, first ecclesiastical, then military, with its hill as the constant.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Udine
- Piazza della Libertà. Framed by the Loggia del Lionello of 1448, the Porticato di San Giovanni, and a clock tower with bronze Mori that strike the hour above the square.
- Castello di Udine. Rebuilt in the sixteenth century after the 1511 earthquake, former seat of the Patriarchs of Aquileia and then of the Venetian governors, now housing civic museums on the hill above the city.
- Galleria del Tiepolo (Palazzo Patriarcale). The frescoes here were painted for the Patriarch Dionisio Dolfin; Giambattista Tiepolo's rooms are reached through the palace's staircase and galleries, the setting as much a part of the work as the ceilings themselves.
How to get to Udine
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Udine is roughly 2 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the Friulian shoulder months, dry, mild, evenings cool enough to sit out on Piazza della Libertà. July and August push past thirty with high humidity off the plain; the porticos shade the worst of it, but the air stagnates. November through March is fog and cold: short days, gray light, the castle on its hill rising above the haze on Piazza Matteotti. Mercatino del Riuso falls in August.
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