Geographical complexity of Friuli Venezia Giulia - almost eight thousand square kilometers of mountain pastures, limestone plateau, the alluvial lowlands and the shelf coast are reflected in its social diversity. The mountainous north is ethnically and linguistically Alpine; the old peasant culture of Friuli, although currently in decline, still gives some coherence to the areas south of the mountains; Udine seems Venetian, liking, slumbering in the Adriatic lagoons, Byzantine-Venetian; in turn, Aquileia (Aquileia), a few kilometers north of them, it is still saturated with the Roman and early Christian past. Sam Trieste, the capital of the region, is a Habsburg city, raised with Austrian capital to the role of the great southern port of the empire. In spirit and appearance, it looks more like Ljubljana than any city in Friuli, except Gorizia (Gorizia).
If the region has some common denominator, this is different from the popular perception of Italy, which grows as you move east. This area has always been a bridge between the Mediterranean world and Central Europe; this undefined multinational creation begins, at least some say, w Monfalcone, north of Trieste. The region was already civilized, already plundered by the invaders from the east, west and north, by the Romans, Huns, Ready, Lombards, Cossacks and Nazis. At its height, Venice covered the coast and lowlands as far as Udine; Napoleon took the baton after the Venetian Republic, and then the Habsburgs.
These 19th-century changes of owners were relatively painless. This was not the case in our century. Carso was one of the most brutal battles of the First World War (plateau behind Trieste), where artillery bullets shattered the limestone, and the hills are still cut by trenches. Huge memorials to victims are a permanent feature of the landscape: bones rest in Oslavia near Gorizia 60000 soldiers, w Redipuglia 100000, in Udine 25 000.
During the Second World War, the loss of lives was lower, but terror reigned here. Italian Fascism, fueled by widespread and long-standing anti-Slavism, he was particularly intense in Trieste, and in the city there was the only concentration camp in the country. One of the strangest chapters of the war took place in the north of the province of Udine: Cossack troops made an alliance with the Nazis and invaded Karnia in exchange for a promise, that when the Reich's situation stabilized, The Cossacks will receive territory along the Carnian mountains. The border conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia was not resolved until 1970 r. and the region remains one of the most militarized in Europe.
Although Friulani want Italian citizenship (they don't want to be Yugoslavs), they do not care about the Italian identity. They have their own customs and traditions, they are convinced of their worth and do not seem to care, what impression they make on strangers. Local dialect, Friulian, It is now undergoing an official revival - many road signs are bilingual, a Societa Filologica Friulana in Udine publishes many publications in the Friulian language version. (Pier Paolo Pasolini, who grew up in Casarsa near Pordenone, he wrote his early poems in Friulano.) The economic condition of the region is quite good: Udine and Pordenone are doing well, Trieste is a hub for container transport and is also becoming a center for computer technology and electronics. Even a catastrophic earthquake had its benefits, because the government subsidies granted to the region back then supported a number of all kinds of small businesses. Several holiday resorts have emerged on the Adriatic and in the mountains, but few places in Friuli Venezia Giulia have already acquired a tourist patina.