History History

The human presence is attested in Italy since the Lower Paleolithic. In Friuli, the oldest archaeological records come from the cave of Visogliano, in the Karst, where lithic instruments and the mandible of a Homo Erectus were discovered.

In the Neolithic period, the populations settled down, practiced agriculture and breeding and produced ceramics decorated with prints or painted. Traces of a Neolithic village of huts have been identified at Sammardenchia, in the municipality of Pozzuolo del Friuli. This site on the high Friulian plain has yielded tens of thousands of manufactured objects, including anthropomorphic terracotta statuettes.

The Paleo-Venetians, an Indo-European people, settled in a territory between the Po basin, Lake Garda and the Tagliamento river in Friuli, which separated them from the Illyrian tribes.

The Carnes of Celtic origin established themselves on the Carnic Alps (to which they bequeathed their name) and the Julian Alps, pushing back the Palaeo-Venetians in the plain.

In the third century BC, Rome had become a great power and had conquered a large part of the Italian peninsula. In 221 BC, its troops entered the eastern subalpine regions for the first time: they crossed the Tagliamento and Isonzo rivers to lead a military expedition to Istria. The colony ofAquileia (Aquileia) was founded in 181 A.D. on the banks of the river Natissa; it was to become a very important city in the Roman Empire. The conquest of the territory led to the definitive subjugation of the Carnes in 115 B.C. In the meantime, Rome had begun to organize a vast network of communication routes. The Via Postumia, opened by the Roman consul Postumius Albinus in 148 BC, connected Aquileia to Genoa on the Tyrrhenian Sea, passing through Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Cremona and Piacenza. From Aquileia there are other routes to the Alpine passes and Istria. Around 50 BC, Julius Caesar, proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul, founded the colony of Tergeste (Trieste) and the trading center of Forum Iulii (Cividale del Friuli), whose name would be contracted to "Friuli" to designate a whole region.

In the year 7 AD, the emperor Augustus reorganized the territory of the peninsula administratively into eleven regions. The Regio X Venetia et Histria covers a vast territory that extends from the east of present-day Lombardy to the Istrian peninsula. Its administrative capital, Aquileia, was at its peak during the first two centuries of the Christian era. Strategically located between Italy and the regions of the Danube and the Balkans, this river port, with direct access to the Adriatic, is also at the outlet of the roads crossing the eastern Alps. Among them: the amber route, which connects the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea. Compared to a second Rome, Aquileia had more than 200,000 inhabitants and stood out as a major commercial crossroads within the Roman Empire. But the barbarian invasions from the end of the second century AD signaled the beginning of the decline of the region.

The emperor Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan, which guaranteed freedom of worship for Christians. Christianity, already widespread in the Roman Empire, thus legitimized, set up its ecclesiastical organization. Aquileia became a bishopric and work began on the basilica.

The Huns, led by the fearsome Attila, penetrated Italy and razed the city of Aquileia to the ground. The latter remained a religious center, while the populations took refuge on the islands of the coast or in the fortified villages of the hills.

In 476, the Western Roman Empire collapsed: the last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by the barbarian Odoacre. The peninsula will then know dark ages: from Constantinople, the emperor Justinian (527-565) wants to reconstitute the Roman Empire. For several decades, the Italian territory was ravaged by the fighting between his troops and those of the Ostrogoths: these were the Greco-Gothic wars.

The bishops of Aquileia take the title of patriarchs, reserved for the most important bishoprics. Aquileia is, in fact, the largest diocese in Christendom after the five patriarchates of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Constantinople.

Arriving in Italy in 568 after crossing the Alpine passes, this people of Germanic origin extended their domination over the peninsula. They founded the Duchy of Friuli, on the eastern borders of the Lombard kingdom, with Cividale del Friuli as its capital. The remains left by this population are extremely rare: for this reason, seven Italian sites that have preserved evidence of the Lombards have been registered with UNESCO since 2011. Cividale del Friuli, with its Tempietto Longobardo, is one of them.

In Rome, the popes were worried about the Lombard advance and called on the Franks. In 774, Charlemagne seized the kingdom of the Lombards and took control of the north of the Italian peninsula. He was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in 800 and, on his way back from Rome, he stopped in Aquileia to obtain the blessing of the patriarch

But the central power weakens during the ninth century and the Carolingian Empire disintegrates. In addition to this, devastating Hungarian raids shook Friuli between 899 and 952, when they were defeated by the Duke of Bavaria and Carinthia.

The Holy Roman Empire, born on the ashes of Carolingian East Francia, was founded by Otto I. It comprised a vast territory stretching from the North Sea to the Papal States, and included Friuli and Istria.

Since the sixth century, the Patriarch of Aquileia had exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction over his diocese. In 1077, as a reward for his loyalty to the imperial power, Emperor Henry IV invested the patriarch Sieghardt of Beilstein with temporal power over a territory between the Alps to the north, the Adriatic Sea to the south, the course of the Isonzo River to the east, and that of the Livenza River (in Veneto) to the west. Trieste, on the other hand, did not fall within its jurisdiction: initially governed by its bishop, the city became a free commune in the 12th century. In eastern Friuli, the county of Gorizia was also an independent territory.

The Principato patriarcale di Aquileia, also called Patria dal Friûl in the regional dialect, was an autonomous principality governed by prince-bishops and endowed, from the 12th century, with a Parlamento (Parliament) that brought together the communes, the nobility and the clergy; the Parliament of Friuli lasted for six centuries, until its abolition by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1805. The patriarch was seated in Cividale del Friuli, and in 1238 he transferred his residence to Udine, a growing commercial city. The 13th century was a period of splendor for the Patria del Friuli: the principality enjoyed a certain prestige on the European political scene and its merchants were present on the international markets. The patriarch surrounded himself with a cosmopolitan court of different languages and cultures.

In the 14th century, however, the Principality of Friuli began its decline: undermined by internal conflicts between communes and factions, it entered into rivalry with the Count of Gorizia and had to face the expansionist ambitions of Venice.

Trieste and the coastal cities of Istria were forced to swear loyalty to the Republic of Venice

After having been subjected to Venice for 12 years, Trieste chose to give itself to Leopold III of Habsburg, duke of Austria: it was the beginning of the Austrian domination which will last more than five centuries (until 1918).

In 1419, the Venetian armies penetrated the city of Udine. One after the other, the Friulian cities surrendered to the enemy and, in 1420, Friuli was officially annexed to Venice. The representative of the Serenissima established himself in Udine; he authorized the continuation of the meetings of the Parliament of Friuli, even if it was henceforth deprived of any decision-making power. As for the patriarch, he was relegated to his ecclesiastical duties and retained only the administration of Aquileia and its direct territory. To face the threats coming from the East (Ottomans and Habsburgs), Venice erected, from 1593, the fortress of Palmanova, a model of military architecture, listed by UNESCO since 2017.

The line of the Counts of Gorizia died out with the death of its last representative. The County passed by inheritance to Maximilian I of Austria. The Isonzo river marks the physical border between western Friuli, in the hands of the Venetians, and eastern Friuli - today's Veneto Giulia - under Habsburg rule

Emperor Charles VI of Habsburg declared Trieste a "free port" (not subject to customs). Previously, he had proclaimed freedom of navigation in the Adriatic and signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire. For Trieste, the only maritime outlet of the Austrian Empire, it was the beginning of a period of prosperity. The port city attracted merchants and entrepreneurs from all over the world. For 10 years, Trieste was the headquarters of the Austrian East India Company, which went bankrupt in 1785.

Maria Theresa of Austria was one of the most important figures on the European political scene in the 18th century. This strong and far-sighted personality, who was however reproached for her bigotry, contributed to modernize the Austrian state through reforms in education, administration and finance. In 1740, she succeeded her father Charles VI, who had died without a male heir. Her power was soon contested and the War of the Austrian Succession broke out. Maria Theresa finally succeeded in imposing her husband, François-Etienne de Lorraine, as head of the Austrian Empire. When he died in 1765, she exercised her sovereignty alongside her son Joseph II until 1780. Maria Theresa contributed decisively to the modernization of the city of Trieste: under her impetus, the salt pans were drained and a new district, the Borgo Teresiano, was built. The Canal Grande and the future Piazza d'Italia were built. Thanks to the empress, Trieste became the fourth largest city in the Empire after Vienna, Budapest and Prague; however, the sovereign never set foot there..

Pope Benedict XIV abolished the patriarchate of Aquileia and replaced it with the archdioceses of Udine and Gorizia.

In 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte entered Venice, which offered no resistance. Doge Ludovico Manin was forced to abdicate. 20 km from Udine, the Villa Manin, residence of the last doge of the Serenissima, was the setting for the signing of the treaty of Campoformio between France and Austria. The treaty formalized the annexation of Venice and its Adriatic possessions to Austria: Friuli and Trieste were thus united under the imperial crown, with the exception of a short period of ten years, between 1805 and 1815, during which Friuli was attached to the short-lived Kingdom of Italy created by Napoleon.

The former territories of the Republic of Venice were not part of it, they still belonged to Austria, but the irredentist ideals made their way: they defended the political unification of all the Italian-speaking territories. In 1863, the Gorizian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli defined the three entities that made up the Triveneto or Tre Venezie (Three Venezies), under Austrian rule: Tridentine Veneto (present-day Trentino Alto Adige), Euganean Veneto (Veneto and western Friuli) and Julian Veneto (present-day provinces of Gorizia and Trieste, and the Istrian peninsula).

Western Friuli (provinces of Udine and Pordenone) was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy at the same time as Veneto. Veneto Giulia belonged to the "Austrian Coast" until 1918.

In 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Located on the border between the two powers, Friuli was painfully marked by the Great War: Italians and Austrians clashed in battles that were known as the "Twelve Battles of the Isonzo", because the front was located along the river. These very deadly battles caused the death of 300,000 Italian soldiers and 200,000 Austro-Hungarians. After the First World War, the borders of Europe were redrawn and the Austrian coastline was ceded to Italy.

In June 1940, Mussolini sided with Hitler and Italy entered the war. But the army, ill-prepared, went from defeat to defeat and popular protest spread through the ranks of the Fascist party. In July 1943, Mussolini was deposed, while a new Italian government negotiated an armistice with the Allies. Warned, Germany sent its troops to occupy Rome and northern Italy. Eastern Friuli was placed under German control and named Adriatisches Küstenland ("Adriatic Coast"). In the concentration camp in Trieste, set up in the former rice factory of San Sabba, Jews, Slavs and resistance fighters were imprisoned. On April 25, 1945, the German army in Italy surrendered. Three days later, Mussolini, who had been arrested near Como while trying to flee, was summarily executed.

Tito's Yugoslav supporters triumphantly entered Trieste. Thousands of Italians, both fascists and anti-communists, were murdered in what became known as the " foibe massacres". Foibe is a Friulian term that means "pits, cavities"; it refers to the natural chasms of karstic origin of the Carso, a high plateau behind Trieste, in which the victims of these repressions were thrown.

Following the Treaty of Paris, the Free Territory of Trieste was created. It was divided into Zone A, under Anglo-American control, which included the city of Trieste and the coastline of the Veneto Giulia, and Zone B, under Yugoslav occupation, which covered the northern part of the Istrian peninsula (a territory that is today shared by Slovenia and Croatia). Until 1956, thousands of Italians, but also Croatian and Slovenian opponents, fled Zone B and the climate of terror created by Marshal Tito's regime and the massacres of the foibe , which took on an ideological and even ethnic character.

Zone A came under Italian administration. However, it was not until the signing of the Treaty of Osimo by Italy and Yugoslavia, in 1975, that Trieste and its territory were finally recognized as belonging to Italy.

Creation of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia.

An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale struck Friuli, killing 989 people and leaving 45,000 homeless.

The Conte II Government, in office since September 5, 2019, is formed by a coalition composed of the Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement and the Italia Viva Party, created by Matteo Renzi in 2019 following his departure from the Democratic Party. On January 13, 2021, following disagreements over the recovery plan, Renzi announced the withdrawal of Italia Viva from the government, which thus lost its majority in Parliament. Council President Giuseppe Conte was forced to announce his resignation two weeks later. Attempts to reform the outgoing government failed, so President Sergio Mattarella turned to former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, the man who had saved the eurozone in 2012. Draghi is tasked with forming a new government. This deep political crisis comes in the midst of a pandemic, when the Italian economy is bled dry and the country is counting on European funds to finance a recovery plan. Draghi received the support of the majority of parties in Parliament and accepted the position of President of the Council of Ministers. On February 13, 2021, Draghi's government was proclaimed: a coalition of parties with very different orientations: Five Star Movement, Lega, Democratic Party, Forza Italia, Italia Viva and Free and Equal.