28 Km from Grado

The city fortress of Palmanova - with nine-cornered starlike shape, immersed on the Friuli plain, is doubtless a unique example of its kind, because of its integrity, among very few existing fortified cities and an ideal city-planning for inhabitants. It was designed by Venetians at the end of the sixteenth century to defend their possessions in Friuli, against the expansion of Hapsburg domination and to stop the Turkish incursions. So far it became a real rampart on the land. The city fortress is composed of three town-walls, the first two, with rampart and ravelins, were realized during the Venetian dominion and the third one, with lunette, during the French occupation. In 1797, after the fall of Venice, the fortified town passed under Napoleonic dominion, then under Austria and later on was annexed to the Italian Kingdom with the plebiscite of 1866.