Udine Discovery Guide
Why Visit Udine the Smart Way
Udine is a city of about a hundred thousand people on the Friulian plain, and it is the capital of somewhere most visitors have never registered as a place. Friuli has its own language, its own food and eight hundred years of not being anybody's province, and this is where it keeps its records.
The friction is that nothing here announces itself. Udine has no famous monument, sits an hour from Venice, and is usually driven past on the way to Austria.
What it has is the best square on the Venetian mainland, and the frescoes in which Giambattista Tiepolo became Tiepolo — painted here in his twenties, in three buildings within ten minutes of each other, with nobody looking at them. Add the wine hills of the Collio to the east and the ham town of San Daniele to the north and this is the most underrated corner of Italy.
How to Experience Udine
Stand in Piazza della Libertà
With the Gothic loggia on one side and the Renaissance portico on the other, and work out which one you prefer.
Go and find the Tiepolos
The patriarchal palace first, for the staircase and the Old Testament ceilings, then the cathedral, then ask at the sacristy for the Oratorio.
Do a tajut round
Three or four bars, a small glass in each, standing up, between six and eight. This is the city's actual social life.
Climb the castle hill
Through the Arco Bollani and up the ramp, for the Alps to the north and the plain running south to the lagoon.
Eat frico
Cheese and potato, fried, either crisp or soft. It is peasant food and it is very good.
Drive east into the hills
Twenty minutes to the Colli Orientali and the Collio, where the border runs through the vineyards.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
Friuli has a reputation in Italy for being hard-working, straightforward and slightly unforthcoming, and Udine is where that is concentrated.
People are direct without being brusque, and warmth arrives later than it does further south. There is little display, almost no hard sell, and a strong preference for doing something properly rather than talking about it.
Regional identity is real and unsentimental. Friulian is spoken, taught and written; the region's autonomy is taken seriously; and being lumped in with the Veneto is the reliable way to irritate somebody.
The 1976 earthquake is a reference point in the way few disasters are: not as trauma but as the thing the region organised itself around and got right. People will tell you about it.
Tourism is almost entirely Italian and Austrian, and the city has made no adjustments for anyone else. English is spoken in hotels and unevenly elsewhere.
The Slovenian and Austrian borders are close and normal, and Udine thinks of Klagenfurt and Ljubljana as neighbours rather than as abroad.
Travel Profile
- Best Known For Where Giambattista Tiepolo became Tiepolo, in three buildings ten minutes apart • The capital of Friuli, which has a language of its own • The best Venetian civic square on the mainland • San Daniele ham and the white wines of the Collio
- Travel Styles Cultural tourism • History • Food and drink • Wine tourism • Museums and galleries • Off the beaten path • Cycling • Architecture
- Travel Environments Historic cities • Countryside • Wine hills • Mountains
- Getting Around On the main line from Venice to Austria, with direct trains to Venice in about an hour and twenty minutes, to Trieste in a little over an hour, and north through Tarvisio towards Villach and Vienna, plus a branch line to Cividale del Friuli in twenty minutes; the A23 runs north to Austria and meets the A4 south of the city, and Trieste-Ronchi dei Legionari airport is forty minutes away with its own station; the centre is flat, walkable and good for cycling, and a car is needed only for the wine hills, San Daniele, Aquileia and the mountains
Responsible Travel Tips
Udine has no visitor pressure at all. The question here is whether anything you spend reaches the region.
Buy the wine at the estate. The Collio and the Colli Orientali are worked by small growers on steep marl, and the difference between a supermarket bottle and a cellar door visit is the whole local economy.
Eat San Daniele in San Daniele and Montasio from the Carnia. Both are protected products with real producers twenty minutes to an hour away.
Use Friulian words where you see them. The language is under pressure from Italian and treating it as a curiosity is worse than ignoring it; treating it as a language costs nothing.
In the rebuilt towns north of here — Venzone, Gemona — remember that what you are looking at is a reconstruction people carried out on their own houses. The plaques explain it; read them.
In the mountains, stay on paths: the Julian Alps carry unstable First World War remains and the ground above the treeline is fragile.
Stay a night rather than day-tripping from Venice; almost nobody does.
When to Visit Udine
September and early October are the best window: warm, usually settled, and the grape harvest under way in the Collio and the Colli Orientali twenty minutes east.
May and June are green and pleasant, with long light and everything open.
July and August are hot, humid and thundery; the city empties and the mountains north of it fill.
Late autumn brings the new wine, the ham, and the first snow on the Julian Alps as a backdrop to a flat green plain.
Winter is cold, foggy and quiet, the Tiepolo rooms are empty, and the tajut circuit is at its most convivial.
Note that many museums close on Monday and that the Oratorio della Purità opens only on request.
Travel Cost Levels in Udine
What a visitor actually pays in Udine
Udine is one of the better-value cities in northern Italy, because it has no tourism to speak of and a solid local economy that keeps restaurants honest. Wine that would carry a premium elsewhere is poured by the glass here for very little. The only pressure on rooms comes from trade fairs and from the autumn wine weekends in the hills.