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It is not certain that the name Udine is of
pre-Roman origin, as researchers support,
deriving from a word meaning 'mamma'
and then metaphorically 'hill'. The fact is,
however, that from the hill in the middle
of the city (which according to a
legend was formed with the earth
carried in Attila's soldiers'
helmets since the king, after
having sacked Aquileia, wanted to see
it on fire) it is possible to sweep in
one look the whole of Friuli, from
the Carnic and Julian Alps to the
gentle morainal hills and the fertile
plains, even glimpsing the
Adriatic in the distance.
It is maybe for
this reason
that a
thousand
years ago a castle
was built on the
hill, subsequently
inhabited by
Aquileia's
Patriarchs, the
Venetian
lieutenants in
the -Friuli
homeland-,
and by
the
Austrian
S. Maria,
angelshaped
weather
vane
governors during their fifty-year rule. The hill is the
heart around which the city was built and has grown,
the reference point for the surrounding territory which
still shows traces of a faraway past in the -castellieri-
of Pozzuolo, S. Osvaldo, Gradisca di Sedegliano, as
well as the traces of a less
distant past in place
names (Codroipo,
for example, is the
Roman Quadruvium,
where four roads
crossed) and those of a
very recent past
(only two hundred
years have gone by)
at Campoformido, the
town which gave its
name to the 1797
Treaty signed
between Napoleon
and Austria
which, sealing
the end of the
century-old Serenissima
Republic of Venice, definitely changed the destiny
of most of Europe and of Villa Manin at Passariano,
the actual place where the Treaty was signed. The
sumptuous Villa was deemed by Napoleon the perfect
backdrop for the signing of the Treaty not only
because it was immersed in the luxurious green Friuli
countryside, but also because, being the home of the
Venice doge Ludovico Manin, it was, in Napoleon's
eyes, charged with profound symbolic values.
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