This borderless Italian city is the proper begin level for a gradual biking break

Ask the individuals of Gorizia what defines their residence, and a few will present you a photograph of a cow, standing between a home and its picket stables, straddling a white line on the bottom. On the night time of 15 September 1947, following the tip of the Second World War and the treaties that retraced the contours of Europe, troopers armed with paintbrushes break up this medieval metropolis in Italy’s north east. The centre remained a part of Italy; the farms and fields, on the jap outskirts, got to neighbouring Yugoslavia, modern-day Slovenia. The shot was taken within the morning, when the picture of the animal over the brand new perimeter — seeming half defiant, half not sure the place it belonged — captured a sentiment locals discovered onerous to place into phrases.

“You can’t speak of a border here,” says information Anna Santellani, clad in head-to-toe Lycra, adjusting the saddle of her mountain bike. We’re about to set off on the Pedemontana, a four-stage, 113-mile biking path that hyperlinks Gorizia and town of Salice. Over two days, we’ll sort out two legs, every about 25 miles, chopping north west throughout the encircling Friuli-Venezia Giulia area, spending the night time in cities and villages alongside the way in which. Our start line is Gorizia’s centre, not removed from the spot the place the image was taken. “Few other places have such a sense of porosity, of continuity. The divide is something relative.”

In the wake of the partition, the dual, modernist centre of Nova Gorica (New Gorizia) was based simply throughout the sting of Slovenia. The two locations have been collectively recognised because the 2025 European Capital of Culture, the primary time the title has been shared by two hosts. Walking excursions cowl the troubled historical past of the realm, taking in sights starting from fascist-era buildings to a tribute to communist statesman Josip Tito spelled in stones on a close-by mount. Meanwhile, the programme of occasions, working till December, goals to transcend boundaries, each actually (‘smuggling tours’ recreating the expertise of Twentieth-century contrabandists) and figuratively (an exhibition on the ‘thresholds’ of trend).

In a means, it’s a becoming welcome to the Pedemontana. The path bridges a geographical frontier, meandering by means of countryside alongside the regional Alpine border. As quickly as we go away town, we discover ourselves among the many light hills of the wine-producing Collio area, the place vineyards drape the panorama like a patchwork quilt; within the distance, at all times in view, are the foothills of the Carnic and Julian Alps. If you have been to proceed to the opposite finish of the path, you’d attain the Friulian Dolomites Natural Park, a part of the UNESCO-listed Dolomite Mountains.

It’s partly the possibility to observe the surroundings unfold like this — play-by-play, slowly however constantly — that’s turned Friuli-Venezia Giulia right into a riders’ playground previously 15 years. On a sensible observe, it has devoted infrastructure, like buses and trains fitted with bike racks; on an experiential one, it showcases a wide range of landscapes, from languid seashores within the south to the Alpine peaks. In 2024, the Pedemontana received the so-called ‘Cycling Tourism Oscar’, given by the Italian Cycling Federation to paths that encourage a slower type of journey.

“The places you visit leave their mark, and that’s especially true if you’re in the saddle,” says Anna over her shoulder, biking simply forward of me. “If you enter a wood, you feel it with your whole body — in the smells, sounds, on your skin.” The path is straightforward on the wheels — partly paved, partly dust, virtually completely flat — leaving me free to deal with what’s round. We greet a girl foraging for wild hops, then brake to choose mulberries and bitter marasca cherries from the roadside. We velocity subsequent to a river in full spate, energised by the rain that’s fallen incessantly this spring, and cross a ford that sends splashes up our shins. When we pause at a roadside cafe, we crash a birthday celebration as a gaggle of locals toasts: “We drink, we drink, we drink!”

“Our wines have collected so many accolades, they’re called ‘super-whites’,” says Anna that night, sipping a glass of native dry Ribolla, in a piazza in Cividale del Friuli on the finish of the path’s first stage. It was the primary duchy of the Longobards, a Germanic tribe that dominated a lot of the Italian peninsula from the sixth to the eighth centuries. They’re remembered as harsh and fierce; many Italian phrases to explain combating are nonetheless derived from their language.

The subsequent day, again within the saddle, we uncover the same harshness to the panorama. The path runs nearer to the foots of the mountains, that are mammoth and jagged like rock-shards. In 1976, an earthquake of biblical proportions had its epicentre right here — so highly effective, its ripples have been stated to have been felt in Rome, over 300 miles south. When the mud settled, the realm was in ruins, together with the 14th-century villages of Gemona, on the finish of stage two, and close by Venzone, the place Anna takes me.

Locals demanded it’s rebuilt ‘where it was, as it was’. Old images have been consulted, the rubble sorted, the fallen constructing blocks positioned so as and numbered. The homes have been reconstructed piecemeal, with every slab in its rightful place. If authentic parts have been too broken, they have been changed with barely totally different copies; generally, a translucent coat was utilized to distinguish the genuine from the reproduction. “They wanted to avoid a ‘theme park effect’,” says Anna as we stroll the streets. “Everything had come down, but you still feel you’re somewhere real.”

Named Most Beautiful Village in Italy in 2017, a title assigned yearly by the National Association of Italian Municipalities, Venzone is so charming you’d by no means guess its backstory. But there are small hints of its tumultous previous. On the facet of the native church, Anna factors out a single stone slab that was restored down its center.

Half of it’s tough, the work of stonemasons of outdated, and half of it’s sheer, a contemporary addition. Half of it one thing, half of it one thing else, the liminal area larger than the sum of its components.