The city

 

Udine is an Italian town and capital of one of the province in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The city is at the center of an urban area of about 176,000 inhabitants, is the capital of Friuli. The city is located in the center of the region of Friuli. It is, as the crow flies, a little over 20 km from Slovenia, and about 54 km from Austria. It is located in the high plains around an isolated hill on top of which is located the castle, not far from the range of hills, and is bordered by the river Cormor to the west and to the east by the river Torre.

In the centre of the city, stands a late medieval castle.The Castle hill is made of drift accumulating during centuries. However, a legend about its origin says that when Attila the Hun, plundered Aquileia (one of the biggest cities of the Roman Empire at that time) in the year 452, he asked his soldiers to build a hill to see the Aquileia burning. This was made by filling the helmet of each soldier with ground. It has always been inhabited but it assumed greater importance when the patriarchs of Aquileia in 1200 decided to move there because it was located in a less vulnerable and more central place within the authority region. Since then, it has always been considered as the historical and institutional capital  of the region of Friuli. Besides the castle and the dome (that it dates back to the medieval era), today it is still possible to see the remains  of the ancient walls at the gates of the fort, many buildings from the Venetian era and several works of Tiepolo belonging to the eighteenth century.