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Friuli Venezia Giulia

With its triple-barrelled moniker, Friuli Venezia Giulia's multifaceted nature should come as no surprise. Cultural complexity is cherished in this small, little-visited region, tucked away on Italy's far northeastern borders with Austria and Slovenia. Its landscapes offer profound contrasts too, with the perpetually snowy Giulie and Carnic Alps in the north, idyllic grapevine-filled plains in the centre, sandy beaches along the southern shore, and limpid lagoons and craggy karst cliffs encircling the regional capital, Trieste.

While there's an amazing reserve of historical sights, from Roman ruins to Austro-Hungarian palaces to World War museums, this is also a destination for simply kicking back with the locals, tasting the region's renowned wines and discovering a culinary heritage that will broaden notions of the Italian table. Serene, intriguing Trieste and friendly, feisty Udine make for great city time – they're so easy and welcoming you'll soon feel as if you're Friulian, Venezian or Giulian too.

Top attractions

These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Friuli Venezia Giulia.

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Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli
The mosaic school in Spilimbergo is one of Friuli's most fascinating places. Although established in 1922 in a post-war effort to provide vocational skills for the poverty-stricken area, the mosaic tradition here is centuries old. Artisans from this school decorated much of Renaissance Venice and have created some of the world’s most celebrated mosaics. Tours of the school run on Saturday at 3pm and need to be booked in advance – via the tourist office or the school directly.
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Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta
The entire floor of the Latin cross-shaped basilica, rebuilt after an earthquake in 1348, is covered with one of the largest and most spectacular Roman-era mosaics in the world. The 760-sq-metre floor of the basilica's 4th-century predecessor is protected by glass walkways, allowing visitors to wander above the long-hidden tile work, which includes astonishingly vivid episodes from the story of Jonah and the whale, the Good Shepherd, exacting depictions of various lagoon wildlife, and portraits of wealthy Roman patrons and their quotidian business interests.
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Castello di Miramare
Sitting on a rocky outcrop 7km from Trieste, Castello di Miramare is the city's elegiac bookend, the fanciful neo-Gothic home of the hapless Archduke Maximilian of Austria. The castle's decor reflects Maximilian's wanderlust and various obsessions of the imperial age: a bedroom modelled like a frigate's cabin, ornate orientalist salons and a red silk-lined throne room. Upstairs, a suite of rooms used by military hero Duke Amadeo of Aosta in the 1930s is also intact, furnished in the Italian Rationalist style.
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Borgo Teresiano
Much of the graceful city-centre area north of Corso Italia dates to the 18th-century reign of Empress Maria Theresa, including the photogenic Canal Grande. Reflecting centuries of religious tolerance, it's here you'll also find the mosaic-laden 1868 Serbian Orthodox Chiesa di Santo Spiridione juxtaposed with the neoclassical 1842 Catholic Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Taumaturgo. On the Via Roma bridge stands a life-sized statue of James Joyce; Piazza Hortis is home to a similar bronze of Italo Svevo.
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Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia
This vast public space – Italy's largest sea-facing piazza – is an elegant triumph of Austro-Hungarian town planning and contemporary civil pride. Flanked by the city's grandest palazzi, including Palazzo del Municipio, Trieste's 19th-century city hall, it's a good place for a drink or a chat, or simply for a quiet moment staring out at ships on the horizon.
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Synagogue
This imposing and richly decorated neoclassical synagogue, built in 1912, is testament to Trieste's once significant Jewish community. Heavily damaged during WWII, it has been meticulously restored and remains one of the most important, and profoundly beautiful, synagogues in Italy. It's not necessary to book the tours; just arrive five minutes before they start.
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Museo del Monte San Michele
This small interactive museum deploys digital displays and an excellent virtual-reality experience to explore the horrors of the Italian front in the First World War. Knowledgeable guides take you through the displays rich in archival photographs, tactical maps and detailed narrative text. Well-chosen artefacts resonate powerfully: a rudimentary gas mask that failed miserably in a chemical attack in June 1916, a small hand-held pick to hack through the mountains, and a short club meant to finish off victims choking on gas.
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Risiera di San Sabba
This former rice-husking plant became a concentration camp in 1943 and has been a national monument and museum since the 1960s. The site commemorates the 5000 people who perished here and the many thousands more who passed through on the way to Nazi forced labour and death camps. These included a great many of the city's Jewish population along with Triestine and Slovenian resistance fighters.
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Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
Udine’s modern and contemporary hub brings together a number of bequests, creating a substantial collection of 20th-century Italian artists, including De Chirico, Morandi, Campigli and Mušič. There’s also a surprise stash of notable 20th-century American work, including by Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre, which were donated by the artists after the 1976 Friulian earthquake. The gallery itself is a beautiful cultural asset, its bold reconstruction designed by the late Gae Aulenti.