Friuli Venezia Giulia

About Friuli Venezia Giulia

Friuli Venezia Giulia (pronounced [friˈuːli veˈnɛttsja ˈdʒuːlja]) is one of the 20 regions of Italy and one of the five autonomous regions with special status. The regional capital is Trieste.

The name was spelled as Friuli-Venezia Giulia until 2001. The region is called Friûl Vignesie Julie in Friulian and Furlanija Julijska krajina in Slovenian, two languages spoken in the region. The city of Venice ("Venezia") is not in this region, despite the name.

Friuli Venezia Giulia has an area of 7,924 km2 and approximately 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many central European countries, the region is crossed by the main transport routes between east and west of southern Europe. It includes the historical-geographical region of Friuli and a small portion of the historical region of Venezia Giulia - also known in English as the Julian March - each with its own distinct history, traditions and identity.

History

In Roman times, modern Friuli Venezia Giulia was located within the Regio X Venetia et Histria of Roman Italy. The traces of its Roman origin are visible on the whole territory. In fact, the city of Aquileia, founded in 181 BC, served as the capital of the region and rose to prominence in the Augustan period.

Starting from the Lombard settlements (6th century), the historical routes of Friuli and Venezia Giulia began to diverge. In 568, Cividale del Friuli (the Roman Forum Iulii (from which the name Friuli derives)) became the capital of the first Lombard duchy in Italy. In 774 the Franks favored the growth of the church of Aquileia and established Cividale as a march. In 1077, the Patriarchate of Aquileia received temporal power from the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and this power was temporarily extended also to the east. But already in the twelfth century Gorizia had actually become independent and Trieste, together with other coastal cities, organized itself as a free city-state.

In the 6th century, the Alpine Slavs, ancestors of today's Slovenes, established the eastern areas of the region. They settled in the most eastern mountainous areas of Friuli, known as the Slavia friulana, as well as the Kras plateau and the area north and south of Gorizia. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they also approached Trieste.

Friuli became Venetian territory in 1420, while Trieste and Gorizia remained under the Austrian empire. Pordenone was a "corpus separatum", under Austrian influence until 1515, when it also fell under Venetian rule. With the Campoformido peace treaty of 1797, Venetian domination ended and Friuli was ceded to Austria. After the period of domination of Napoleon, who also affected Trieste and Gorizia, it again became part of the Austrian Empire and was included in the Lombard-Venetian kingdom, while Gorizia was merged with the Illyrian kingdom and Trieste, together with Istria, entered be part of the Austrian coastal region. The enlightened policy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries favored an extraordinary economic development, making Trieste the port of empire. The outcome of the war of independence brought Friuli alone to the Kingdom of Italy.

After the First World War, in which this region was the main theater of operations and suffered serious damage and loss of life, the fates of these borderlands were united again, although Venezia Giulia, in particular, was the subject of contradictions related to borders .

World War II led to the Anglo-American administration in Trieste until the border was established with the London Memorandum in 1954. [citation needed] When Trieste was returned from Italy, the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia could finally be established. [citation needed]

The name of the region was written Friuli-Venezia Giulia (spelled) until 2001, when, in connection with a modification of article no. 116 of the Italian constitution, the official spelling of Friuli Venezia Giulia (without hyphen) was adopted. The term "Venezia Giulia" was coined by Graziadio Isaia Ascoli.

Geography

Friuli Venezia Giulia is the most north-eastern region of Italy. It covers an area of 7,858 km2 and is the fifth smallest region in the country. It borders Austria to the north and Slovenia to the east. To the south it overlooks the Adriatic Sea and to the west its internal border is with the Veneto region.

The region extends over a wide range of climates and landscapes from the mild ocean in the south to the Alpine continent in the north. The total area is divided into a mountainous-alpine terrain of 42.5% in the north, 19.3% is hilly, mainly in the south-east, while the remaining 38.2% includes the central and coastal plain.

Source: Wikipedia
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friuli-Venezia_Giulia