Region
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Friuli-Venezia Giulia's 26 towns in our catalogue split across the Udine, Pordenone, and Gorizia provinces; 13 carry the Borghi più belli d'Italia designation.
26 towns · highest: Sappada 1,250m · smallest: Sauris 389 people
26 of 26 towns
26 of 26 towns
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.
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, with Borgo Autentico mark, a centro almost entirely rebuilt after the 1944 German wartime burning, and direct access to the Forni Avoltri-Sappada ski and 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, split from its neighbor by a 1947 wall and rejoined only after decades of division.
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, 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 on the Friuli plain, its geometry closed three centuries after it began.
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
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.
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.
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.
Valvasone Arzene
Province: Pordenone
A medieval borgo at 57 meters on the Tagliamento's right bank, organized around a castle and a Duomo.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.
Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.