Palmanova, the star city

Getting there

Palmanova is next to the junction between the A4 and the A23, and by motorhome you get there without difficult roads. You can drive round the walls on the outer ring road; inside, the streets are wide and straight, but you can enter only through the three gates. For the night there is a small equipped area of the Comune, outside the walls to the north-east.

• From the A4, from Venice or from Trieste, take the Palmanova exit and in a few minutes you reach the outer ring road round the walls. From Udine come down the A23 to the junction with the A4, or on the SS352 main road, which enters the city through Porta Udine. From Gorizia take the motorway link road to Villesse and then the A4 towards Venice, as far as the Palmanova exit
• The Comune's motorhome area in via Risorgimento, 33057 Palmanova (UD), at the coordinates 45.91210, 13.31711, outside the walls to the north-east, next to the sports grounds. It is free, with a maximum stay of 72 hours, and has two equipped bays with two free electricity sockets, water filling and emptying of grey water and of the cassette; according to travellers, in October 2026, the electricity and the grey water drain work, and the cassette drain does not. When the two bays are full travellers park in the nearby car park, but not in the large open space, where the school buses turn. It is open all year round and the night is quiet; in the morning the school buses pass. Piazza Grande is a little over a kilometre away on foot, entering through Porta Cividale
• The via Vallaresso car park, inside the walls, at the coordinates 45.90647, 13.31493, just inside Porta Cividale and four hundred metres from Piazza Grande: a large free open space, unsurfaced and grassy, with trees, without services, where motorhomes also stop for the visit. At the end of September and in October, with the funfair of Santa Giustina, it is taken over by the funfair people's trucks: in 2026, according to travellers, until 24 October
• For the tunnels walk out through Porta Udine, go down under the arches of the Venetian aqueduct and follow the moat for about three hundred metres, as far as the Baluardo Donato: from the Infopoint in Borgo Udine it is about 600 metres, some ten minutes

Practical information

The weekend is the right time: the tunnels, the multimedia room and the Virtualift open only on Saturdays and Sundays, while the square, the gates and the bastions can be visited every day, at any hour and free. It is best to start from the Infopoint in Borgo Udine, which opens every day, then the square and the gates, and after lunch the tunnels and the walk round the walls.

Contacts

Where it is

Palmanova · Friuli-Venezia Giulia

You set off from

Notes

• The Infopoint of PromoTurismoFVG is at Borgo Udine 4, in Palazzo Trevisan, a few steps from the square: according to the Comune's tourism website, in October 2026, it opens every day from 9:00 to 13:00 and from 14:00 to 18:00. There you buy tickets, pick up the maps of the routes and hire the city audio guide
• The countermine tunnels and the Baluardo Donato: under the ravelin, beyond the moat, runs a 550-metre route in the seventeenth-century tunnels, which when needed could be mined and blown up under the enemy's feet; it comes with an audio guide and characters in augmented reality, in Italian, English and German. You come out into the open, enter the sally tunnel and climb back up inside the Baluardo Donato to the guard loggia and a viewpoint over the city. It takes from 20 to 50 minutes for the short route and from 30 to 90 for the full one. According to the Comune's tourism website, in October 2026, they open on Saturdays and Sundays, morning and afternoon, with hours that change with the season; PromoTurismoFVG gives from 10:00 to 16:00, with last entry an hour before closing. The ticket, at the ticket office at the entrance, costs 5 euros
• The multimedia room and the Virtualift, in Palazzo Trevisan, at Borgo Udine 4: in the room a 3D-printed model of the fortress, at a scale of 1:1000, with projections and four virtual narrators, among them Giulio Savorgnan and Marc'Antonio Barbaro, tells the story of Palmanova from its foundation to UNESCO in about 45 minutes, in Italian with subtitles in English and German. The Virtualift, in the palace garden, is a fake lift with screens and a vibrating platform: in 5 or 15 minutes it rises above the city and shows the star from above, without headsets. According to the Comune's tourism website, in October 2026, they open on Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30 to 13:00 and from 14:00 to 17:00, and cost 3 euros for the room and 7 euros for the Virtualift
• The combined ticket, according to the Comune's tourism website in October 2026, costs 12 euros and includes the tunnels, the multimedia room and the Virtualift. Young people under 14 are free and, for all three, so are holders of the FVGcard
• Piazza Grande was the parade ground, where the garrisons gathered. In the centre stands the stendardo, the flagpole: the Istrian stone base with three well-heads dates from 1611, the 28-metre mast from 1893, and the people of Palmanova, the palmarini, call it Mario; on top of it have flown the banner of San Marco, the French flag, the Habsburg eagle and the Italian tricolour. Around it, besides the Duomo: the palace of the Provveditore Generale, from 1598, today the town hall; the Loggia della Gran Guardia, from 1620 to 1625, seven arches where the Provveditore's guard was posted; the palace of the Governatore delle Armi, the governor of arms, from 1613; the Monte di Pietà, from 1666, which stayed in business until 1978; the stele of Priuli, from 1654, to say that the fortress had never been besieged
• The eleven statues round the square are of provveditori generali, but nobody knows for sure who: in 1691 a Venetian law had names and coats of arms erased from the pedestals, so as not to leave a cult of individual officials. At the start of Borgo Aquileia two columns carry the archangel Michael and a second bronze figure, copies: between those columns, in Venetian times, condemned prisoners were executed
• The Duomo Dogale, at Piazza Grande 11A, is open during the day and entry is free: a facade of white stone from Orsera and grey stone from Aurisina, with the Redeemer, San Marco and Santa Giustina in the niches and a winged lion remade in 1893-1894, because the French had destroyed the real one in 1797. Inside, a single nave with a timber truss ceiling, the Pala delle Milizie, the altarpiece of the militias, by Padovanino and, in the sacristy, the portraits of some of the provveditori
• In Piazza Grande there are also five seventeenth-century building-site machines remade full size from the drawings of Bonaiuto Lorini: for driving piles, carrying earth, raising water, pounding gunpowder. You can look at them for free at any hour, in half an hour, and on the Comune's website there are descriptions to listen to
• The three gates: Porta Udine still has the two great wheels of the drawbridge, and outside is the Venetian aqueduct, rebuilt several times and in its present form from 1771, with the little cascades of the Roggia di Palma, the canal that brings the water of the Torre from 32 kilometres away and ends in the moat. Porta Cividale has its rusticated stonework and, up above, the military museum; Porta Aquileia, the ceremonial gate, houses in its keep the MAPE, the museum of bees and the ecosystem. Outside Porta Cividale and Porta Aquileia the two outer gates remain. The inside of the gates can be visited only during openings or events
• The bastions: you can go all the way round the wall walk, with the guard lodges, the small powder stores and the viewpoints over the moat, about four kilometres long. The Comune suggests three marked routes: the Passeggiata dell'Architetto, the architect's walk, about a kilometre and a half, in the city; the Passeggiata nel Parco dei Bastioni, the walk in the park of the bastions, from 1.8 to 3.5 kilometres, with the tunnels; the Anello delle Fortificazioni, the ring of the fortifications, of 4.3 kilometres, on foot, by bicycle or on horseback, as far as the Napoleonic lunettes. From the Belvedere del Cavaliere, between Porta Aquileia and the Foscarini bastion, you see the whole structure of the defences; from the Belvedere dei Salici the moat between the first and the second ring. The Ciclovia Alpe Adria cycle route, from Salzburg to Grado, also passes through Palmanova
• The Napoleonic lunettes are nine triangular earthworks beyond the tips of the bastions, with a small fort in the centre and two casemates hidden under the grass. The one you find going out of Porta Aquileia and turning left, the Lunetta Contarini, has become a meadow for the bees of the European project LIFE PollinAction; you can go inside the lunettes only on special openings
• The Napoleonic powder magazines of contrada Garzoni and contrada Foscarini, with barrel vaults and slits for air, today host exhibitions and meetings, and open only for those; the third, in contrada Barbaro, is waiting for restoration
• Palmanova XR: at seven points in the city, from the tunnels to the postern of the Garzoni bastion to the little cascades of Borgo Udine, you frame a QR code with your phone and a 360-degree video of about three minutes starts, with soldiers, duels and taverns of the seventeenth century; the full round takes about an hour and a half, free. On the Comune's website there is also the Mappa parlante, the talking map, with nine stories to listen to and four videos
• Visits with a guide: according to PromoTurismoFVG, from 31 October 2026 to 5 January 2027 there is "Palmanova: passeggiata nella città stellata", a walk in the star city, an hour and a half with a guide, at 15 euros, free with the FVGcard; the days and times are given by the Infopoint. All year round, except 25 December and 1 January, at the Infopoint you can hire the audio guide "Palmanova, la fortezza perfetta", the perfect fortress, in Italian, English and German, at 5 euros, free with the FVGcard. For a private guide the Comune points to the associations of tourist guides of Friuli Venezia Giulia
• The Civico Museo Storico, the civic history museum in Palazzo Trevisan, is closed for refurbishment and the reopening date has not been announced. It holds maps, documents, weapons and relics from the foundation to the Great War, with 161 weapons of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on loan from the museum of Castel Sant'Angelo, and an iron-bound chest that opens with sixteen moves in sequence
• The Museo della Grande Guerra e della Fortezza, the museum of the Great War and of the fortress, the military museum opened by the Ministry of Defence in 1990 in the keep of Porta Cividale, is temporarily closed according to PromoTurismoFVG, with no reopening date
• The former Montezemolo barracks, in Borgo Aquileia, the great store for ammunition and provisions built from 1596, is a building site: with PNRR funds, the national recovery plan, and the Ministry of Culture's "Recovery Art" project it will become a depot for damaged works of art with restoration workshops
• The walls are restored piece by piece: the Baluardo Donato was the pilot site, with a brick made specially, and in 2026 the Comune is working on the first bastion to be restored in full
• The Austro-Hungarian cemetery, at via Ontagnano 1a, outside the city, is open every day from 9:00 to 18:00, free: an avenue of cypresses with the graves of about four thousand soldiers with names and, at the end, the chapel and the two mass graves with more than fifteen thousand unnamed fallen of the Great War
• On Monday mornings there is the town market. On the big festival days (Pasquetta sui Bastioni, Easter Monday on the bastions, the September re-enactment, the Fiera di Santa Giustina) the city fills up, and so do the car parks inside the walls
• The events: Pasquetta sui Bastioni on Easter Monday, with the picnic on the meadows between Porta Udine and Porta Cividale and guided tours of the tunnels; on the first weekend of September the historical re-enactment, in even years that of 1615, "Palma alle Armi", Palma to arms, in odd years the Napoleonic one of 1809; on the last weekend of September the Festival della Città Ideale, the festival of the ideal city; around 7 October the Fiera di Santa Giustina, for the patron saint and the foundation, with the funfair in the square; at the end of November the half marathon; from 1 December to Epiphany "Palmanova, la Stella di Natale", the Christmas star

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