Udine Events

Friuli Doc

In the second week of September the city centre becomes a four-day showcase for the region's food and wine, with stalls from every corner of Friuli filling the squares and streets. It is very large, very local, and the single busiest weekend of the Udine year.

Far East Film Festival

In late April, one of the most important European festivals of popular East Asian cinema, which has been running here since 1999 and brings a crowd to the city that nothing else does.

The tajut hour

Not an event but the evening rhythm: from about six the bars around Piazza Matteotti fill with people standing, drinking a small glass, and moving on. It is the most reliable thing to join in the city.

The autumn wine weekends

Through October and November the estates of the Collio and the Colli Orientali open for tastings, and the new oil and the first ham of the season appear at the same time.

Santa Caterina

The fair on 25 November is the old winter market and still fills the streets.

Christmas and the Epiphany fires

Through the villages of the plain on the night of 5 January, great bonfires are lit and the direction of the smoke is read as a forecast for the year's harvest. It is a pre-Christian habit that nobody has bothered to stop, and it is visible for miles from the castle hill.

Markets

Saturday morning in Piazza Matteotti, which is the city's living room at any hour and a proper market on that one.