| Municipality of Latisana
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Pop.: 11,936
Area: 37,73 sq. km, 7 m a.s.l.
Neighbourhoods: Bevazzana, Gorgo, Latisanotta,
Paludo, Pertegada
Town Hall: P. Indipendenza, 74 - 33053 Latisana
Phone.: 0431.525111 Fax: 0431.520910
www.comune.latisana.ud.it
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The Romans had immediately
realized that the site where
Latisana would rise had a strategic
role in the military and economic
control of the area, as the Tagliamento
represented an extraordinary line of
communication by water, while the route of
Via Annia required both safety and efficiency
well as a stop for horse changing and
refreshment (mutatio Apicilia). This natural
function of the place was continued also in the
Middle Ages when -even though the hydrogeological
conditions had changed- river
transport was reopened; a Portus Latisanae
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was mentioned in documents since 1118 and
maintained, even under different political
governments, a primary role in the exchange of
goods from the Mediterranean to the hinterland
and in the transit of pilgrims, so much so that
present-day Piazza Indipendenza was in those
times the trading hub of the port, also equipped
with a hospice. Remarkable traces of those
thriving times, especially in the 1500s, are
found in the Duomo of San Giovanni
Battista, whose present structure is the result of the
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18th-century restructuring of a 1504
church in which, among other works, the high
altar houses an important altarpiece by Paolo
Veronese with Christening of Jesus
(1566-1567). The Church of S. Antonio, too,
dates from the 18th century, formerly belonging
to a Franciscan monastery (see the cloister);
19th-century is instead the Church of S. Maria
delle Grazie at Sabbionera. Agriculture is
still today one of the main activities, after
being for centuries, since the decline of the
port, the only hope for survival. Great impulse
came in the field thanks to the Austrian
agricultural policies (vine growing and
silkworm breeding) and it is to an agronomist,
Gaspare Luigi Gaspari, that a Neoclassical
mausoleum was dedicated, Tempio Gaspari
(1860): Gaspari is remembered also for having
protected the centenary imposing tree of
Zelkova Crenata (1792), 38 m high and 7 m of
trunk circumference. Finally, the River
Tagliamento offers the naturalistic reality of
high-water bed woods.
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| BASSA FRIULANA
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The name "Bassa"
identifies the Friuli plains
extending towards the Adriatic,
beginning more or less from the so-called
Stradalta (just a bit south
of the present-day
Strada
Napoleonica),
namely below the line of
resurgences from which
rivers or streams or
simply natural springs
often originate,
contributing to shaping the...go
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