Country houses and chapels of the middle part of  Friuli opened their doors to visitors on Sunday, 8 October 2017.

Thanks to the beautiful sunny autumn day, many people, like me, took the opportunity to discover these little-known and usually inaccessible treasures, accompanied by the excellent tour guides of Itineraria that promoted the initiative.

The first stop on my tour to discover this part of Friuli were the charming gardens of Villa Colloredo Venier at Sterpo di Bertiolo, with their indisputable master  attraction that is the majestic Farnia: a 500-year-old oak that is 20 metres high and with a diameter of almost 8 metres. A real spectacle that enchants adults and children!

The park is not just a nature attraction but also a place of great historical interest: it was here that the first peasant uprisings began in the Maundy Thursday rebellions that swept through Friuli in 1511. Where today we see the beautiful villa Colloredo Venier there was once an old castle that was severely damaged during these insurrections; if we carefully observe the little chapel that today stands in the park, we can still see the traces of one of the old towers.

Between the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the manor was the summer residence of the Colloredo family, which retained its possession until 1959 when it was sold to Dr. Venier, the current owner.

I pursued my tour among the treasures of this area of Friuli at Santa Marizza di Varmo, to visit Villa Bartolini Tàmmaro, built in the seventeenth century by Counts Cernazai on the remains of an ancient monastery.

It was exciting to walk through the rooms that inspired the illustrious and multifaceted writer Elio Bartolini, who chose this building as his home and place of inspiration until his death.

Currently, the Venetian villa is owned by Massimo Tàmmaro, former commander of the Frecce Tricolori display team, who is restoring and studying it in order to preserve the seventeenth-century frescoes within and to promote the great cultural heritage it houses.

Leaving the villa, another delightful surprise crowns the day: a horse-drawn carriage for visitors to reach the nearby chapel of Santa Maria Assunta.