Picture this.

You’re sitting outside a café on a warm evening. Dusk is falling, and a gentle rain shower has just moved away.

In your hand is a glass of superb white wine, and you’re looking out over a cobbled medieval piazza to the sound of laughter.

The cobbles glisten in the golden lamplight and the piazza is surrounded on two sides by marble loggias where people sheltered from the brief downpour.

Somewhere in the distance, solemn double chimes toll from a bell, announcing 7pm.

Well-dressed locals are gathering in groups for a drink after work. They’ve taken a long lunch and prefer to finish work now because this is the finest hour of the day.

You’re the only visitor. No one chooses to speak English, although everyone understands it well.

The other tables pay you no attention, and you’re finishing the day feeling sophisticated and cultured, without having visited a single landmark.

The scene I’m describing unfolds every night in the quiet city of Udine, high in the northeast corner of Italy.

Udine’s Venetian elegance

Udine’s pedestrianised centre has a distinctly Venetian elegance, with baroque palazzi and reverent frescoes.

There are even a few little canals running through the city, remnants of medieval water management, but they don’t have boats on them.

There are magnificent sights here, such as Castello di Udine, Piazza Libertà, and the Gallerie del Tiepolo, to name a few.

By rights, Udine ought to be busier with tourists, but it isn’t.

Like many fine cities, I stumbled on it quite by accident while passing through on the way to Trieste to catch a train out of the country.

The lofty peaks of the nearby Julian Alps had whipped up an almighty thunderstorm that thrashed the cobbles and rocked the stone arcades.

I spent the calm evening hours before the storm walking a winding route from the station to my hotel, admiring how perfectly Udine is set up for alfresco eating and drinking, and vowing to return.

And I wasted no time seeking out and enjoying the region’s finest product—white wine—on Piazza Giacomo Matteotti, watching the brooding onset of the storm and waiting for it to break.

Discovering Friulian culture

Wanting to shelter from the rain when it arrived but not ready for bed, I stepped into the Osteria da Teresina and got my first taste of Udine’s unique Friulian culture.

Without paying too much attention, I ordered something to eat. When my plate arrived adorned with a robust pile of deep-fried olives, I was a little bemused.

Deep‑frying an olive seemed to me like the last thing I would ever do to one. And considering I was in Italy, I expected something a bit more …chic.

What I had failed to appreciate was that this region of Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, has a distinct identity that can be traced back to the 6th century AD, when the Lombards and Alpine Slavs (today’s Slovenes) settled in this corner of Italy.

Friulian is a recognised minority language that’s widely spoken here, and many signs are printed in Italian and Friulian.

The local food, meanwhile, sits somewhere between a babushka’s “make do with what you have” simplicity and the inventive flair of a talented Italian chef.

At the risk of underselling it, think high-altitude cheeses and superbly incorporated root vegetables, and you have a rudimentary understanding.

Once I’d come round to the olives, I branched out. The Friulian food was new to my palate but delicious indeed.

Dishes that stood out (no, I didn’t eat them all in the same sitting) include:

• Frico: a sticky, molten disc of fried Montasio cheese and potatoes
• Jota: a smoky bean‑and‑sauerkraut stew
• Cjarsons: sweet‑savoury ravioli filled with herbs, chocolate, or even raisins
• Gubana: an indulgent spiralled cake stuffed with nuts and spice

Every year, there is a festival in Udine called Friuli DOC that celebrates the region’s cultural heritage by taking over the entire city centre with food and wine stalls, and live events.

When I finished my olives and settled the bill, a group of young girls at the next table took great delight in imitating my deep, gruff voice, perhaps taking me for another wild settler from the north.

Whatever the reason, their laughter confirmed that not many English folk wander through Udine, and it followed me all the way to the door.

And as if to hammer home the point, the bar featured a squat toilet—something I hadn’t expected to encounter in this elegant city.

How Udine does alfresco dining

Laugh at this if you like, but I’ve often found pasta surprisingly hard to find in northern Italy.

Perhaps this is a sign that my visits are away from major tourist zones, but in any case, I’ve noticed that slices of pizza and pots of gelato are far easier to come by than pasta.

Determined to tie in my “return” visit to Udine with eating some truly great pasta, I sit down outside a toasteria (a panini bar) called Poco di Buono.

My criteria for choosing the place was simple—it sold pasta and had outdoor seating right next to a stream rushing down from the mountains, emerging from beneath some nearby buildings.

The courses of a typical Italian meal are:

• Antipasto
• Primo
• Secondo
• Contorno

Unlike the UK, these portions are meant to be complementary, rather than hierarchical.

Primo is not a starter in the usual sense, and primo and secondo portions are usually the same size.

This took me a while to understand and probably contributed to my failure to find good pasta.

The meal served to me at Poco di Buono was hearty: fragrant butter and sage gnocchi, chilli pasta, brittle parmesan, and bresaola garnished with rocket that was tangy enough to make my cheeks tingle.

But I mention this meal entirely because of the generosity of the proprietors, who on seeing my appreciation, left me with three bottles of homemade liqueur as a digestif.

I was very merry indeed with so much sweet limoncello sitting on top of my wine.

Friulano. The white wine of Friuli

Speaking of wine, all of Italy is a wine‑lover’s delight, and the vineyard is to Italy what hawthorn bushes are to the UK.

But Udine and the surrounding regions are particularly blessed, producing some of the finest Italian wines.

The standout is Friulano, a type of white wine also known as Sauvignonasse.

It’s soft, rounded, and very fruity without being sweet; a world away from the acid‑sharp, bone‑dry stuff in UK supermarkets.

Most of it is grown in the Colli Orientali and Collio hills, just east of Udine. These gentle slopes catch the Alpine breezes to produce some of Italy’s most elegant whites.

Just across the border in Slovenia, the Brda and Vipava valleys produce equally superb whites that are mineral and aromatic, and grown in the same mercurial Alpine climate.

To say I like the local wine is an understatement.

Determined to take as much home as possible, I fill my carry‑on suitcase with as many bottles of wine (produced by a winery that has been operating since the 17th century) as will fit, kidding myself that the combined weight of the wine, clothes, and case is less than my allowance of 10 kg.

When I check it in at the desk, the case comes in at 19.6 kg. I’m eternally grateful that the Ryanair staff didn’t force me to pour it away or buy more luggage allowance.

A word, too, for Udine’s SPAR outlets. A vineyard tour wasn’t required to buy superb wine—it was all available from this chain’s amply stocked wine selection.

Morning coffee rituals

But wine belongs to the evening, and mornings in Udine demand a coffee ritual.

My ritual was simple: head over to Grosmi caffè with a good book, order a cappuccino and some crispy, ricotta‑filled aragostine, and sit watching the day unfold until I felt compelled to move.

Grosmi is situated on the corner of a quiet lane that links the busier parts of the city, and people rarely stop unless they want coffee, which makes it the perfect place to watch Udine go about its day.

Some mornings, a man with an accordion settles nearby and serenades the street, somehow completing the scene.

So much travel ends up as route‑marching from sight to sight, sometimes to the point of pushing out the very people who live there.

But Udine is different. It’s inhabited, purposeful, and still functions as a social, cultural, and commercial hub rather than a seasonal theme park propped up by tourism.

I think that’s why I like the place so much.

Walking Udine at night

On Friday and Saturday nights, students flock to the city centre to blow off steam, and the bars and pubs stay open late.

This was how I first found the city, sheltering from the storm at Osteria da Teresina.

In this respect, too, Udine behaves like a regular city despite its rich identity and attractions.

The historic centre isn’t large. You can cross it in a little over an hour if you can resist taking a detour up to Castello di Udine to stare at the Alps, or falling into a wine bar.

My favourite time to wander around is late at night, when the bell towers and loggias are lit in a way that’s tremendously calming.

If you’re lucky, you might stumble upon an art installation in one of the piazze.

Italians adore Formula One, and it made me smile to see a full‑scale model of one of Niki Lauda’s scarlet Ferrari Grand Prix cars displayed opposite Udine’s cathedral.

Great day trips from Udine

And it’s this sense of peace and being unbothered by tourism that makes Udine such a satisfying place to return to after a day out exploring the region.

It’s conveniently placed for adventurous onward trips, and after a few days taking in its cafés and piazze, you’ll likely want to travel a bit further.

Visit the Alps

The Julian and Carnic Alps sit just over an hour to the north by train (Tarvisio Boscoverde station is right under Jôf di Montasio), making Udine perfect for spending time in the mountains without being confined to a small ski village.

Head to Venice or Trieste

Venice and Trieste, both far busier than Udine but with lots to offer, are little more than an hour away as well, and frequent services run directly to both cities.

Venice is far busier than Udine, but there are ways to enjoy it away from the crowds.

Trieste, on the other hand, is tucked out of the way but has a beautiful imperial waterfront.

Cross the border into Slovenia

Or, if you’re feeling truly adventurous, you can take a short train ride to the border town of Gorizia.

Cross its central square, and you’ll find yourself in Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

That’s to say, you can step across what was once one of Europe’s most sensitive frontiers.

The Italy–Slovenia border still runs through this shared urban space, but the town was physically divided in 1947, when parts of historic Gorizia were absorbed into Yugoslavia.

It wasn’t the border with the Soviet Union, but it was a Cold War boundary that once separated Italy from socialist Yugoslavia.

It must have been strange to live there during those decades, knowing an international border, complete with guards and fences, cut straight across your town’s square and held back a vastly different ideology.

A quieter Italy

But the troubled history of 20th‑century Europe is hard to square with Udine’s placid rhythm.

It doesn’t rival cities like Rome or Florence for abundance, but it makes up for it by not being turned inside out by mass tourism, and it has its own parallel Friulian culture and cuisine waiting to delight visitors.