Place:Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Friuli-Venezia Giulia is one of the 20 regions of Italy and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The regional capital is Trieste on the Gulf of Trieste, Adriatic Sea.

The region is called in Friulian, in Slovene and in German, three languages spoken in the region. The city of Venice ( in Italian) is not in this region, despite the name.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia has an area of and about 1.2 million inhabitants. A natural opening to the sea for many central European countries, the region is traversed by the major transport routes between the east and west of Southern Europe. It encompasses the historical-geographical region of Friuli and a small portion of the historical region of – also known in English as the Julian March – each with its own distinct history, traditions and identity.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

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

Following the Lombard settlements in the 6th century, the historical paths of Friuli and Venezia Giulia began to diverge. In 568, Cividale del Friuli (the Roman Forum Iulii (from which the name Friuli is derived)) became the capital of the first Lombard dukedom in Italy. In 774, the Franks, favored the growth of the church of Aquileia and established Cividale as a march. In 1077, the Holy Roman Emperor recognized the territorial powers of the Patriarchate of Aquileia that temporarily extended its rule to areas to the east. Already in the 12th century Gorizia had become independent and Trieste, along with other coastal towns, developed into a free city-state.

In the 6th century, the Alpine Slavs, ancestors of present-day Slovenes, settled the eastern areas of the region. They settled in the easternmost mountainous areas of Friuli known as the Friulian Slavia, as well as in the Kras Plateau and in the area north and south of Gorizia. In the 12th and 13th centuries they also moved closer to Trieste.

Friuli became Venetian territory in 1420, while Trieste and Gorizia remained within the Holy Roman Empire. Pordenone was a "corpus separatum", under Austrian influence until 1515, when it also fell to Venetian rule. With the 1797 Peace treaty of Campoformido, the Venetian domination came to an end and Friuli was ceded to Austria. After the period of domination by Napoleon, which affected also Trieste and Gorizia, it again became part of the Austrian Empire and was included in the Lombard-Veneto Kingdom. Gorizia was assigned to the Illyrian Kingdom, whereas Trieste and Istria became part of the Austrian Coastal Region. Under the enlightened government and policies set by the Austrian Empire and continued by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, Trieste flourished, reaching an extraordinary economic development as the main harbour of the Habsburg empire. The war of independence led to the annexation of Friuli to the Kingdom of Italy.

During the First World War, the region was a prominent theatre for military operations and suffered serious damage and loss of lives. After the war, these borderlands were united within the Kingdom of Italy, although Venezia Giulia's borders were the subject of an international dispute.

The Second World War led to the creation of the Anglo-American Administration in Trieste until the border was defined in the 1954 Memorandum of London. After Trieste was reassigned to Italy, the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia was finally established.

The region's name was Friuli-Venezia Giulia (hyphenated) until 2001, when the official spelling Friuli Venezia Giulia (without hyphen) was adopted following the modification of Article No.116 of the Italian Constitution The term "Venezia Giulia" was coined by Graziadio Isaia Ascoli.

Research Tips