Friuli-Venezia Giulia

The region changes its character with almost every bend. In the north, Carnia is a country of steep valleys, slate roofs and villages that cling to the slopes, where the air smells of resin and woodsmoke and the mountains close in early. South of them the land opens onto the Friulian plain, a patchwork of maize, poplar hedges and farmhouses with deep loggias, and the horizon finally widens. Eastward, toward the Slovenian border, the rolling hills of the Collio and the Colli Orientali are cut into terraces of vines, where the wine houses are low and family-run and the views fall away over the valleys. Further south the ground rises again into the Karst, a limestone plateau of sinkholes, dry-stone walls and wind-bent scrub, and then drops abruptly to the sea at Trieste.

On a day's drive the towns read like chapters. Udine has an elegant central square, its clock tower and loggia set with the stone lion of Venice, and an afternoon there is a matter of café tables, arcades and slow walking. Aquileia, quieter and older, holds a basilica whose floor mosaics are still legible under the lamps, and the surrounding fields are flat enough that the bell tower seems to rise out of nothing. Palmanova, built as a fortress with a star-shaped outline, is best seen from its ramparts, where the geometry of the streets makes sense at last. Trieste is a different proposition altogether: a grand sea-facing square that opens straight onto the water, cafés that still carry the scent of old coffee roasting, and above the town the white castle of Miramare on its rocky promontory.

The coast is part of the same story, not an add-on to it. At Grado the old town sits on a lagoon of mudflats and reed beds, reached by a causeway, and the fishing boats rest on the shallows while herons stand motionless at the edges. Walk its narrow lanes at dusk and the mountains you left that morning seem a long way off, which is the point of the region. You can leave it with the impression of having crossed several countries, and you will be tempted to go back and do it all again, more slowly, to stay in the mountain air for a few days, then come down to the lagoon for the sea.