Villa Manin di Passariano
The Villa is an imposing architectural structure of uncommon beauty, built by the powerful Manin family, between the 17th and 18th century. Inside the chapel, which was probably designed by Domenico Rossi (1707-1718), there are sculptures by Giuseppe Torretti (1719-1723).
Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice, lived in Villa Manin; Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine Beauharnais were there one night between the 27th and the 28th of August 1797 and there on the 17th of October 1797 France and Austria signed the Treaty of Campoformido.
Many distinctive features and pictoresque foreshortenings adorn the park which is rich in rare botanical species, artificial small lakes, hilloks, valleys and groups of statues.
The Villa, bought and restored by the Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, is now centre of the Restoration School and of the Institute for the Reckoning of the Cultural and Environmental Estate. In the left exedra shops and handicraft workrooms are being equipped, while the central structure receives yearly noteworthy exhibitions and shows.
San Daniele del Friuli
From the top of a hill the little town enjoys a beautiful landscape: the semicircle of hills all around.
Its strategic position and the presence of a rich Jewish community favoured trade and contributed to make San Daniele del Friuli a powerful little town, which was a free city for a long time.
Two famous men, Guarnerio d'Artegna (1387-1467) and Giusto Fontanini (1666-1736), founded and enriched what is today considered one of the richest libraries in Italy: the Guarneriana Library.
The Cathedral is an imposing building. restructured between 1707 and 1725 by architect Domenico Rossi. The church of Sant'Antonio Abate has the most beautiful series of Renaissance frescoes in Friuli, the work by Pellegrino from San Daniele (1476-1547).
Typical of San Daniele is the production of the famous ham which takes an incomparable taste because of its special processing and the peculiar climatic conditions of the place.
Gemona del Friuli
A visit to Gemona doesn't only give you a chance to see the town considered the heart of Friuli, but above all, it enables you to understand what meant to Friuli the earthquake in 1976. The air you breathe walking along the narrow streets of the centre is no longer the same as before: everything has changed, although the reconstruction has respected the artistic and cultural peculiarities of this land in every slightest detail; it is however a stimulating kind of "new" deeply rooted in its historical past.
Among the ancient medioeval monuments which have been completely restored the visitor can admire the Town Hall, with its harmonious Renaissance lines in Venetian Lombard taste and the splendid Cathedral, one of the most expressive examples of religious Romanesque-Gothic architecture existing in the Region.
Venzone
In 1965 the citadel of Venzone was declared "monument of great historical-artistic interest" by a governmend decree, but the earthquake in 1976 destroyed it almost completely. It was rebuilt in a philologic way, that is "where it was and such as it was", between 1982 and 1986 with its 150 buildings, of which about fifty are of great historical-artistic value.
The medioeval walls as well as the Town Hall in its harmonious Gothic-Renaissance lines have been rebuilt and the reconstruction of the cathedral is nearly over; the church is one of the most remarkable monuments in the Region; its origins date probably back to the year one thousand while some of its structural parts were built in 1251.
AZIENDA REGIONALE PER LA PROMOZIONE TURISTICA
UFFICIO DECENTRATO Dl UDINE
Piazza I Maggio, 7
Tel. (0432) 295972 - Fax (0432) 504743
