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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. The tour takes you through classrooms, often with the students still at work, explaining the different styles of mosaic taught: Roman, Byzantine and some stunning free-form modern mosaics. Although students here still cut their tessera on tree trunks topped with a metal wedge, training here is rigorously modern, covering colour theory, materials science, 3D modelling and design. Alumni have worked on major projects around the world, including those in the Foro Italico in Rome, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the subway station at Ground Zero in New York. The school itself forms a canvas for the students work with every floor, staircase, bathroom, wall and pillar covered in different styles of mosaic. As such, it represents a unique record of 20th-century mosaic work and wow’s at every turn. Summer classes and short courses (€220 to €460) are available for those inspired by what they see.
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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. Treasures also fill the basilica's two crypts. The 9th-century Cripta degli Affreschi (Crypt of Frescoes) is adorned with faded 12th-century frescoes depicting the trials and tribulations of saints, while the Cripta degli Scavi (Excavations Crypt) reveals more mosaic floors in varying states of preservation. Some images were destroyed or badly damaged by the erection of the basilica's 73m-high bell tower, built in 1030 with stones from the Roman amphitheatre. The FVG Card offers free admission.
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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. Maximilian originally came to Trieste in the 1850s as the commander-in-chief of Austria's imperial navy, an ambitious young aristocrat known for his liberal ideas. But in 1867 he was shot by a republican firing squad in Mexico, after briefly, and rather foolishly, taking up the obsolete crown. Maximilian was also a keen botanist and the castle boasts 22 hectares of landscaped gardens, which burst with the colour and scent of rare and exotic trees. To get to the castle from the city centre, take bus 6 to Miramare (just past Grignano). Walk through the underpass to reach the seaside path. It's a 15-minute walk to the castle.
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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. You can also discover intriguing remnants of the 16th-century building's previous lives: Roman foundations; spectacular, vivid 14th-century frescoes that were uncovered during construction; and the Cavazzini family's 1930s Rationalist apartment, where you can peek at the old-style gym rings in the bathroom and a formal dining room’s intensely hued folk-art inspired murals.
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Museo Revoltella
This extraordinary house-museum was the home of wealthy Triestini merchant Pasquale Revoltella, who made his fortune in the timber industry and had a hand in the Suez Canal. Aside from his lavish accommodation, he spent much of his money supporting contemporary Triestini artists, patronage that the city continues as part of his bequest. The result is an enormous collection of late 19th- and 20th-century art that now covers several floors in the adjoining Palazzo Brunner. You’ll need several hours to browse the curious collection, which eschews the typical roll call of Italian artists for lesser-known Friuliano and Central European names. Look out for the impressively fleshy sculptures by Rovan Ruggero and standout portraits by Carlo Wostry, Isidoro Grunhut and Gino Parin. There's also a pretty rooftop cafe and a good bookshop.
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PAFF!
This unique museum dedicated to the art of comic books and illustration is the only one of its kind in Europe and is the brainchild of Pordenone’s dynamic community of graphic artists. They have housed it in the lovely villa in the Galvani Park and plan to make it a reference point for all forms of graphic art. If the inaugural show 'From Leonardo to Picasso: A Comics’ Journey into the History of Art' is anything to go by, they’re on the right track. Beyond the first-class exhibitions curated by graphic artists, they have a lively program of events, courses, workshops and recreational activities. The gallery also works closely with Pordenone’s Silent Film Festival, Blues Festival and well-regarded book festival, PordenoneLegge.
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Santuario di Barbana
Situated on an island in the lagoon, the Barbana sanctuary is an ancient shrine, the origins of which date back to 582. The current church dates to the 1930s and has a strikingly original interior decorated in art deco frescoes and luminous stained-glass windows. Also of interest are the hand-drawn pictures that cover the back wall: they depict accidents which local congregants have survived and offer a fascinating historical snapshot of local dangers dating back to the late 19th century. There's a cafe on the island serving a simple fixed menu. Motoscafisti Gradesi runs services to the sanctuary from Grado.
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Chiesa di Santo Spiridione
Constructed from pearly white Istrian stone in 1868, the Serbian Orthodox church has a typical Byzantine style, its large central dome flanked by four hemispherical cupolas. Built by wealthy Serb ship owners, it has an unmistakably Eastern look and is an important repository of Serbian culture. Inside, it is richly decorated with glittering mosaics and 19th-century gold and silver icons from Russia. It remains an active church, serving Trieste's Serbian community, which is estimated as between 10,000 and 18,000 people and is the city's largest minority.
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Faro della Vittoria
Trieste’s elegant lighthouse, with its 68m-high, fluted tower and copper dome sporting a soaring Winged Victory, is perched on the Gretta Hill and worth a visit for the spectacular views it affords of the Gulf of Trieste. Built both as a lighthouse and a memorial to soldiers who died in WWI, it bears an inscription at the base that reads: 'Shine in memory of those who died at sea'. During the Barcolana, the lighthouse is open every day from 9am to 5.30pm. Take bus 42 or 44 from Piazza Oberdan.