Discover Udine

Udine sits at about 110 metres on the Friulian plain, with the Julian Alps visible to the north, and has roughly a hundred thousand inhabitants.

The city is built in rings around a castle hill that rises abruptly out of flat ground; legend gives it to Attila's army and geology does not entirely disagree that it is artificial.

Piazza della Libertà at its foot is a complete Venetian civic set piece: the pink-and-white Loggia del Lionello of the 1440s, a Renaissance portico opposite, a clock tower with two bronze Moors striking the hours, and the columns of the Lion and of Justice.

The Tiepolo frescoes in the patriarchal palace, the cathedral and the Oratorio della Purità are his earliest major works and the real reason to stop.

Udine is the capital of Friuli and the working centre of a region with its own language, and the wine country of the Collio and the Colli Orientali begins twenty minutes away.