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, Frisanco, and Sappada. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 on the Friuli plain, its geometry closed three centuries after it began.
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.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.