How Was Udine Built

Udine grew outwards from a hill in concentric rings, and each ring left a wall that is now a street.

The rings

Successive circuits of wall enclosed the growing city between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Each was later demolished and replaced by a boulevard, so the plan reads as a set of circles with the castle at the centre, and the old gates survive as names.

The Loggia del Lionello

Built from 1448 to a design by a local goldsmith, Nicolò Lionello, it is Venetian Gothic in pink and white stone, with a pointed arcade and a balcony — the Doge's Palace idiom, adapted for a mainland city hall. It burned in 1876 and was rebuilt to the original drawings.

The other side of the square

Facing it, the Porticato di San Giovanni of 1533 is pure Renaissance, with a clock tower whose two bronze Moors have struck the hours since 1852. Having Gothic and Renaissance face each other across one square is the whole history of the city in one glance.

The castle

The medieval castle was destroyed by the earthquake of 1511 and rebuilt as a Renaissance palace, which is why it looks like a government building rather than a fortress.

The patriarchal palace

Rebuilt in the early eighteenth century, and decorated immediately afterwards by Tiepolo, whose ceilings were designed for these specific rooms and have never left them.

After 1976

The rebuilding of the destroyed towns north of here was done stone by stone from photographs and survey drawings, and the phrase used for it — where it was, as it was — became a standard in Italian heritage practice.