Friuli Venezia Giulia

I first reached this region as a boy, by train with my aunt and a friend of hers. Arriving in Trieste we visited the city, and in particular the Church of San Giusto on a hill, then took a local bus for a short loop as far as Muggia before returning to the city. From here by train we reached Gorizia to spend the night in a hotel almost on the border with what was then Yugoslavia. The frontier was marked by a wall with an iron railing, through which you could see perfectly the very close Nova Gorica railway station on the other side. This layout effectively showed how Gorizia had been split in two by the new borders; that wall was not as famous as the one in Berlin but was entirely analogous. We also asked whether it was possible to go to the other side, but they told us a passport was required and we had only our identity cards, so I limited myself to peeping through the railing.

The next day, around Gorizia, we visited the Oslavia memorial and the great Redipuglia war memorial, a staircase occupying a vast portion of a hill where the tombs of our fallen soldiers are laid. We moved on to Udine, visiting the city with its central square dominated by a bell tower, a reduced version of St Mark's in Venice, complete with winged lion. From here we took the train which, crossing the Carnia and the Tarvisio Pass, took us into Austria for a quick raid on Villach before returning to Friuli the same day. Then by train from Udine we left Friuli to head home. Many other times I have passed through this region on my way to more distant places, crossing the borders with Yugoslavia first and Slovenia later, around Trieste, or much more often the one with Austria at Tarvisio.

These passages gave me the chance to stop a few times at Tarvisio or to climb from there the narrow road leading to Fusine in Val Romana and then cross the small alternative border with Slovenia. During another passage, this time around Trieste, where the frontiers are at Villa Opicina and Basovizza, I stopped near the latter to see a foiba. Obviously this narrow fissure in the karst, where in the immediate post-war period hundreds of people guilty only of being Italian lost their lives at the hands of Tito's death squads, has been closed, but a monument recalls the tragic event. On another occasion, returning from a trip abroad, I stopped at Aquileia with its Basilica rich in Roman mosaics and numerous archaeological remains.

From here in a few kilometres you reach Grado, an island town set within a lagoon certainly not comparable to Venice but sharing some of its features — here too there are bridges and canals. Returning to the mainland, still connected by a bridge, I headed inland to drive around the characteristic Palmanova, entirely surrounded by walls that trace a nine-pointed star with several monumental gates. I have also been a few times to Pordenone as a reporter of roller-hockey matches, but I saw very little of the city.