Udine

Monday, 16 November 2009

From Trieste I took the train an hour north to Udine for the town’s Fuorirotta (‘off the beaten track’) festival. Udine is one of those very swish small Italian towns, a place that looks well off. It’s a reminder that if you divided off northern Italy from the rest of the country it would be one of Europe’s wealthiest countries. If not the wealthiest.

The town centre is dominated by the Loggia di San Giovanni, sporting a clock tower looking remarkably like a squashed down version of the one in Venice’s Piazza San Marco along with a collection of statuary. It stands below the hill topped by the town’s castle with its gallery of antique art.

◄  Loggia di San Giovanni

 

 

From Udine I headed east to the border town of Gorizia, from where I could walk across the border into Slovenia and catch a bus to Ljubljana.