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The landscape surrounding
Pordenone is lively and varied,
changing from the ups and downs of
the Pedemontana hills and the green
area of Polcenigo to the expanse
of cultivated and clay-coloured fields
of the southern area.
The geographic, historical
and cultural
development of
the whole territory
has
been
marked by the presence
of waterways (River
Livenza along the western
border of the
province and Rivers
Noncello and Meduna
to the east), which have
always been a way of communication
rather than a
barrier. It is thanks to these
waterways that the early Roman settlement
from which Pordenone would develop was set
here, as the furthermost river port from the
Adriatic; it is thanks to these rivers that
the area has become - more than others in the
province- a kind of -middle earth- between
Veneto and Friuli, where different accents and
traditions are blended.
Deep changes were brought about in
the Pordenone area after the Second
World War, when agriculture and crafts started
to give way to industrial activities: the
leading companies in the production of household
appliances have grown together with
the -furniture district- and Pordenone has progressively
grown to the size of
a modern city, sometimes
to the detriment of the
aesthetic balance and
liveability of the old city,
until it has absorbed the
towns of Cordenons, Roveredo
and Porcia in a single urban
sprawl.
And if in this highly
industrialized area, along
whose major thoroughfares
the sequence of sheds
and warehouses is
almost continuous,
the visitor is not
yet aware of
being in the middle
of a heartless megalopolis,
it is only thanks to the artistic
witnesses to which the visitor is drawn, being it
a simple rural church almost
disappearing among soy plantations or
threatened by concrete.
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