Udine: capital to discover

Presents: Franca Bartoli

Edited by Erminia Scarcella 

The diva Franca Baroli gave a presentation on her hometown: Udine.

Udine is the capital of Friuli and the seat of the province itself.

Franca gave us an overview of the history of Udine, born around a central hill in the Friuli plain.

Legend has it that Attila, king of the Huns, ordered his 500,000 soldiers to bring earth with their shields to form a hill from which he could see the light of the fire that burned Aquileia after its siege. This is how the soldiers, filling their helmets with earth, built the hill of Udine. According to the legend, Udine was born around the year one thousand and its importance grew with the decline of Aquileia and Cividale del Friuli.

History, on the other hand, says, based on recent excavations carried out on an area at the base of the hill, to the surveys with the method del radiocarbonio on the materials that make up the hill, and su_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_ some ceramic finds found, which can be dated the origin  of Udine to the Bronze Age. Initially it was thought around 1700 BC but more recently it is believed around 1300 BC because the materials that make up the hill are not derived from liquid materials slipped downstream during the ice age and subsequently consolidated, but from sand and clay as demonstrated by the recent excavations.

Historically, based on the first reliable testimony, the conventional date of birth of Udine  dates back to 983, when Otto II of Saxony ceded that hill with the underlying area previously called to the German bishop Rodoaldo Patriarch of Aquileia Castrum Utinum, with the name of UDENE. In the following centuries, 5 protective walls were built in Udene vennero. Between 1223 and 1248 the Patriarch Bertoldo Andechs first granted the free market and subsequently the tax exemption, a trick that gave a new important impetus to the city. Udene fell under the dominion of the Serenissima in 1420 for 300 years until, with the treaty of Campoformido, on November 17, 1797, it was ceded to Napoleone. Finally, it passed to the Habsburgs before  joining the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

Udine is a delightful, elegant city with strong Venetian influences. There you can admire a beautiful castle (hence the famous song: "O ce Biel çiastiel a Udin") with an important museum, the beautiful Lionello loggia in its most important square, Piazza della Libertà. Among the various squares, Piazza San Giacomo stands out, very pretty which still has an eighteenth-century style and is the living room of the city where people gather to have a chat and have an aperitif.

Franca also showed us videos of the most interesting churches with beautiful frescoes by important painters.