Friuli-Venezia-Giulia is a complex region, with it's largest city Trieste (a port city), located on the Adriatic coast.
Friuli, and especially its capital, Trieste, is an area beloved by the British novelist James Joyce, balancing precariously on the fault-line between Slavic and Latin Europe.
Visitors with a passion for European history will be fascinated by the region, while outdoor enthusiasts will find the beaches of the Adriatic and the ski slopes and forest trails of Carnia to the north are all just a short trip away.
Many towns in Friuli offer visitors an old world, Habsburg charm with wide Viennese-style boulevards, imposing civic buildings and beautiful sea-fronted squares. One of the largest and most famous piazzas in Friuli "dell'Unità d'Italia" in Trieste, is where locals sit over espressos admiring their Mazzolini fountain.
One of the major reasons the province of Friuli has an authentic german feel to it is because it's capital came to prominence as an 18th-century port for the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the city began to take on neoclassical architectural flavor.
In the 19th century, the city was known for its thriving café culture where passionate political debates raged over concentrated cups of Illy espresso.
The region of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, only became part of Italy in November 1918 after WW1 but in WW2 the city fell to the Germans. After the war, the Allies took control and nine years of Italian-Slovenian wrangling ensued until Trieste returned to the Italian fold becoming the country's most smallest and easternmost province.
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