The best hidden wine towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Udine
Friuli Venezia Giulia makes some of the most precise white wine in Italy, and the landscape that produces it changes within the space of a short train ride. North and east of Udine the ground rises into the ponca, a crumbling marl and sandstone that gives friulano and ribolla gialla their salt and grip; south towards the lagoon the plain flattens into river gravel where refosco and merlot ripen late into autumn. The towns here are built low, in pale Istrian stone and river cobble and rough plaster, with porticoes wide enough to shelter a market. Come in September or October, when the harvest is on and the frasche open their doors to sell prosciutto San Daniele, frico and a jug of whatever came off the press.
Most visitors treating this corner as wine country point the car at the Collio proper and then run down to Trieste for the seafront cafés, or cross to Slovenia for the Brda tastings. Trieste in particular absorbs almost everyone who comes this way, with its Habsburg squares and its coffee houses, and in summer the coastal road towards Duino and Sistiana moves at a crawl. Nothing wrong with any of it, though the wine itself is not made there.
The vines and the railway keep going. The Venice-Trieste line and the Udine branches thread through farming towns where a Roman basilica floor, a Lombard temple or a Benedictine abbey sits a short walk from the station, and where cellars belonging to the national association of wine towns are open to anyone who rings the bell. These are the smaller places, less written about than the big names, and we have confirmed each can be reached without a car.
Of the 20 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Udine, 8 qualify as wine towns you can reach by train: each belongs to the national association of wine towns, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. This list is the hidden ones, 6 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Aquileia, has 3,128 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best hidden towns you can reach by train in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and The best wine towns in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
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.
Sesto al Reghena
Why visit Sesto al Reghena
Sesto al Reghena sits at 13 meters on the Friuli-Venetian plain, between the Tagliamento and the Reghena, a small river bordered by linden trees that runs through the centro. The name records the sixth Roman mile out of Concordia Sagittaria on the road to Iulia Augusta.
The town is one place: the Abbazia di Santa Maria in Sylvis, founded by the Lombard nobles Erfo, Marco, and Anto between 730 and 735, occupied by Benedictines until 762, sacked by a Magyar raid in 899, and refortified with walls and a moat in the tenth century. The abbey crypt is supported by twenty columns, several of them Roman spolia.
At the center stands the Urn of St. Anastasia, a single block of Greek marble carved by Cividale masters in the eighth century, with rose, cross, and arched motifs.
The abbey complex is the current town hall, the only commune in Italy headquartered inside a fortified Benedictine monastery. In Friulian, the village is called Siest.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Sesto al Reghena
- Abbazia di Santa Maria in Sylvis. Eighth-century Benedictine abbey, refortified after the 899 Magyar sack, with a crypt of twenty columns and Carolingian-era frescoes; now the town hall.
- Urna di Sant'Anastasia. Single block of Greek marble in the abbey crypt, carved by Cividale masters in the eighth century with roses, crosses, arches, and rosettes.
- Torre Grimani. Surviving gate-tower of the medieval abbey defenses, named for the Venetian commendatory abbots who held the monastery in the sixteenth century.
How to get to Sesto al Reghena
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 53 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Sesto reads best. The Reghena banks are walkable, the abbey courtyard catches afternoon sun, and the Lison-Pramaggiore vineyards south of town are in their working seasons. July and August push past thirty-three degrees with the heavy humidity of the lower Friulian plain, and the abbey's crypt becomes the coolest room in the comune.
Gradisca d'Isonzo
Why visit Gradisca d'Isonzo
Gradisca d'Isonzo sits at 32 meters on the right bank of the Isonzo, ten kilometers downriver from Gorizia. The Venetian Republic built it from scratch starting in 1479 as a frontier bastion against Ottoman raids that had reached Friuli the previous decade.
The fortification consumed twenty years and the advice of Leonardo da Vinci, sent here by the Senate in 1500 to redesign the artillery defenses. The result was a walled town twenty meters high, ringed by seven towers and a wide moat, with the river itself diverted into the defenses.
Maximilian I took it for the Habsburgs in 1511 during the War of the League of Cambrai, and it stayed in Austrian hands as the seat of the Principesca Contea di Gorizia e Gradisca for the next four centuries. The town that grew inside the walls is Baroque: the Palazzo Torriani, the Loggia dei Mercanti, the Casa de Fin, all built under the Habsburgs.
Casanova passed through in 1773. Today the walls, towers, and grid still hold.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Gradisca d'Isonzo
- Fortezza Veneziana. Walled town from 1479, twenty meters high, ringed by seven towers and a wide moat, designed in part by Leonardo da Vinci in 1500.
- Torre di San Giorgio. Northwest bastion tower of the Venetian wall, the most complete of the seven and the symbol of the borgo.
- Palazzo Torriani. Sixteenth-century palazzo of the Della Torre family, later the residence of the Austrian Capitano, now the Town Hall on Via Roma.
How to get to Gradisca d'Isonzo
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 34 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the best months for Gradisca. The Isonzo runs blue-green from the Julian Alps snowmelt, the cycle path along the river opens, and the Saturday market fills the Spianata. July and August bring the heat the Friuli plain is known for, often above thirty-three degrees with high humidity, and the centro storico empties from two until six.
Cormons
Why visit Cormons
Cormons sits at 51 meters where the Friulian plain rises into the Collio hills, twelve kilometers west of Gorizia on the Slovenian border. Once a Lombard fortress, then a residence of the Patriarchs of Aquileia, the town was contested between Venice and the Habsburgs and stayed Austrian from 1500 to 1918.
Palazzo Locatelli and Palazzo Waiz Del Mestri, facing the main square, keep the Viennese restraint of that period, and the church that anchors the square dates from the same Habsburg-era rebuilding. The vineyards begin on the slopes immediately north of town, where the soil locals call ponka gives way to the hill of Monte Quarin above, its ruined fortress looking down over the DOC zone and across the border into Slovenia.
The cooperative cellar draws its grapes from growers scattered through those same slopes. In 1870 Count La Tour brought French vines into nearby Russiz di Capriva for the Imperial Court palate, which the 1891 Austrian Oenological Congress in Gorizia codified.
What holds the town together is the border itself: a fortress height, a planted slope, and a square built by the empire that once ruled both, still standing in the order Austrian rule left them.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Cormons
- Piazza della Libertà. Central Habsburg-era square framed by Palazzo Locatelli and other Austrian-influenced civic buildings, with the statue of Emperor Maximilian I at its center.
- Duomo di Sant'Adalberto. Eighteenth-century cathedral on the central square, the principal church of the Habsburg-era town, with painted ceiling and altarpieces of the period.
- Monte Quarin. Hill above Cormons (274 m) with ruins of the Lombard-patriarchal fortress, panoramic views over the Collio vineyards and into Slovenia.
How to get to Cormons
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 34 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the green window on the Collio hills, vines budding then leafing, ponka soil still cool from spring. September and October are the vendemmia months, the harvest dictating the rhythm of every cantina in the commune. July and August are warm and humid, the plain's heat pushed into the hills; tasting rooms run on appointment. Borgnano in Festa! falls in August.
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.
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