Upper Italy is shaped like a tilted T and the administrative region named ‘Friuli Venezia Giulia’ is situated on the right side of the upper horizontal bar. It is four-fifths the size of the isle of Cyprus, or twice the area of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Its geographical location has constantly invited disruption. During the decline and fall of the Roman Empire—swarming invaders from north and east used this land as a springboard to enter the Italian peninsula. During the First World War, its hills formed bloody battlegrounds.

Bordering Austria and Slovenia and poised on the northern point of the Adriatic Sea, the name of this region includes that of three cultures, because lumping their identities together with one word might upset locals. Friulians admit that they are a somewhat introverted and almost secretive people associated with highlands, unlike their more overt and seafaring Giulian neighbors from the coastal city of Trieste further south. They emphatically remind visitors that residents of Trieste are most certainly not Friulian. Cultures as well as climates vary within this small pocket of landscape—from oceanic influences in the south, to an Alpine continental climate further north. Languages spoken here include Italian, Friulian (a Latin language), a dialect from Trieste and a smattering of Slovenian.