Cividale del Friuli Geography & Climate

Cividale sits exactly at the point where mountain country becomes plain, and that position is why it exists.

The gorge

The Natisone has cut a narrow gorge through conglomerate rock here, thirty metres deep in places, with water that runs an improbable green in low flow. The town sits on both lips of it, and the bridge stands on a boulder wedged in the middle.

The gateway

Behind the town the Natisone valleys run east into the hills and over low passes into Slovenia. This is one of the easiest ways through the eastern Alps, which is why a Roman forum, a Lombard capital and a First World War front line all ended up in the same few kilometres.

The Natisone valleys

East and north of the town the valleys are steep, wooded, thinly populated and Slovene-speaking, with villages strung along the slopes and a long history of emigration.

The wine hills

South and west the ground falls into the Colli Orientali del Friuli, marl hills producing some of Italy's best white wine, and the plain begins immediately beyond them.

Matajur

The mountain that closes the view east, at 1,641 metres, sits on the border and was fought over in 1917.

Downstream

Below the town the Natisone crosses the plain, joins the Torre and reaches the Isonzo near the sea, so a river that looks like a mountain torrent here is part of the same system that carried the front line of 1915.

Water and stone

The conglomerate the town is built on is soft enough to cut, which is why there are chambers, cellars and an unexplained hypogeum underneath it.

Cividale sits at the foot of the mountains, and its weather belongs to them more than to the plain.

Rainfall

This is one of the wettest corners of Italy. Moist air from the Adriatic rises straight into the Julian foothills a few kilometres away, and annual totals here run well above 1,500 millimetres, with the valleys behind the town wetter still.

Winter

Winter is cold and damp, with highs around 6°C and regular frost. Snow falls most years and lies briefly in the town, longer in the valleys east of it.

Spring

Spring is green, wet and quick; April and May bring the hills into leaf and the Natisone up in flow with snowmelt.

Summer

Summer is warm and humid, above 30°C in July and August, with afternoon thunderstorms building over Matajur that arrive fast and hard. The river is where the town spends August.

Autumn

September and October are the best weeks: warm, clearer, with the vintage in the hills immediately south and the beech woods turning by the end of the month.

The river

The Natisone rises and falls dramatically. In low summer flow it is a series of green pools; after heavy rain in the hills it fills the gorge within hours.

The valleys are colder

Ten minutes east and two hundred metres higher, the Natisone villages hold snow for weeks when the town has none, and their roads are the first thing to close in winter.

What to bring

Waterproofs in any season, and shoes for wet rock if you go down to the water.