Region
Friuli-Venezia Giulia
The towns
26 of 26 towns
26 of 26 towns
Aquileia
Province: Udine
A village of 3,124 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 1894.
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 520-resident alpine borgo at 777m in the upper 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 588-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 harbor, 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, neighbor 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 1866.
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 earthquakes and rebuilt as it had been, winner of Borgo dei Borghi 2017.
More in Friuli-Venezia Giulia
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Ways in: Day trips from Trieste · By train · Where to eat well · What is on in the next thirty days
By landscape: Hill towns · Mountain towns · Coastal towns
By designation: Borghi più belli d'Italia (13) · Bandiera Arancione (4) · Parco Regionale (3) · Città dell'Olio (3) · Città del Vino (10) · UNESCO (3)