San Daniele del Friuli and its prosciutto

Getting there

San Daniele has no railway: you get there by motorhome, or by bus from Udine. From Udine you head towards Fagagna, and the road climbs gently among the hills; from the A23 motorway you leave at Udine Sud and follow the signs for Spilimbergo, Fagagna and San Daniele, and coming from Austria you leave at Gemona-Osoppo and go through Majano. The centre is on the hill, with narrow streets and a multi-storey car park: the motorhome is left down below, in the Comune's two areas, and you walk up.

• Motorhome area in via Udine, at the Palasport: the municipal area closest to the centre, in the piazzale Uomini delle scorte vittime di attentati mafiosi, dedicated to the bodyguards killed in Mafia attacks, along via Udine, with 20 paved pitches. Free, open all year round, with a camper service for water filling and emptying, without electricity and without toilets. You stay at most 48 hours in any seven days, as the Comune's regulations say. It is about half a kilometre from the Duomo and the Guarneriana, uphill; the Museo del Territorio and the sanctuary of the Madonna di Strada are on the same via Udine, halfway. Coordinates: 46.15656, 13.01347
• Equipped area in via Osoppo, at the Zulins sports ground: the Comune's second area, north-east of the hill, with 10 paved pitches. Free, open all year round, with water filling, emptying of grey and black water and lighting, without electricity. Here too 48 hours at most; to stay longer you ask the Polizia Locale, the municipal police. It is about a kilometre on foot from the Duomo. Coordinates: 46.16622, 13.01988
• For the prosciuttifici: they are almost all on the southern and western outskirts of the town, along via Kennedy, viale Trento Trieste, via Battisti and via Ciconi, less than a kilometre and a half from the via Udine area. You go by motorhome, and park in the company's yard when there is one; the Alberti prosciuttificio says on its website where to leave the car
• The Polizia Locale, which is responsible for the two areas, is on telephone 0432 943080, email p.municipale@san-daniele.it

Practical information

Arrive in the morning, visit a prosciuttificio with the tasting, go up into the centre for the Guarneriana, Sant'Antonio and the castle park, and eat in a prosciutteria, a ham bar. The visit to the Guarneriana is booked, except on Friday afternoon, and the best days are Thursday and Friday.

Contacts

Where it is

San Daniele del Friuli · Friuli-Venezia Giulia

You set off from

Notes

• The Ufficio Turistico Pro San Daniele, the tourist office, is at via Roma 3, next to the Guarneriana: according to the Pro San Daniele, in 2026, it is open Monday to Friday from 9:30 to 12:30 and from 15:00 to 18:00, on Wednesdays only from 15:00 to 18:00, on Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30 to 12:30 and from 14:30 to 18:00 (mobile 353 4239961). It hires out the audio guide "Alla scoperta di San Daniele", discovering San Daniele, for 3 euros
• Visits to the prosciuttifici: the Consortium publishes the list of producers open to the public, six in 2026, and each has its own rules. Those that suit a family are four:
• Prolongo, viale Trento Trieste 129, telephone 0432 957161, prosciutti@prolongo.it: visits all year round by booking, Monday to Saturday from 8:30 to 13:00 and from 14:30 to 18:00; according to the Consortium, in 2026, the sensory visit costs 35 euros per person, with a tasting of fiocco, punta and stinco, three cuts of the ham, grissini and a glass of Friulano, for groups of 2 to 15 people. Those not taking the visit can have a look, at the same hours, at the room next to the shop with the hams hanging from the wooden racks and the Berkel slicers. English, German, French and Spanish are spoken too
• Bagatto, via Cesare Battisti 26, telephone 0432 957252, info@prosciuttibagatto.it: according to the prosciuttificio, in 2026, the visit is free for customers, Tuesday to Saturday at 11:00 and on Saturdays also at 15:00, with at least 4 or 5 people; you book at least one working day ahead, and in December visits are suspended. It ends with a taste or a tasting in the room next to the shop, open Tuesday to Saturday from 9:00 to 19:00
• Coradazzi, via Kennedy 128, info@coradazzi.it: according to the prosciuttificio, in 2026, visits for groups of 6 to 15 people on Fridays at 16:30 and on Saturdays at 11:00, only by asking by email and waiting for confirmation; with the tasting that follows at the Al Baccaro prosciutteria, two kilometres away, they cost 30 euros a head, drinks excluded. During the visit you also watch films of the processing
• Alberti 1906, La casa del prosciutto, via Ciconi 30, telephone 0432 957422: according to the prosciuttificio, in 2026, the visit is held only on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, by booking at least a day ahead, lasts 30 or 40 minutes and is free, but is reserved for those who then have lunch in its osteria, à la carte, for about 35-45 euros per person
• The Picaron receives only groups of at least 20 people, and the Camarin groups of 14 or more
• Where to taste it in town: there are a dozen prosciutterie, between the centre and viale Trento Trieste. The Pro San Daniele lists among others the Compagnia del Prosciutto at via Gemona 17A, Ai Bintars at viale Trento Trieste 63, Al Bersagliere at via Roma 16, Al Dolcenero at via Fagagna 1, which also does cooked dishes, and the Osteria al Poc at via Fontanini 32. The prosciutto can be bought whole, in vacuum-packed pieces or sliced at the counter in the shops of the prosciuttifici
• The Biblioteca Guarneriana: the old section is in the Palazzo Comunale of 1415, with the loggia on the square, next to the Duomo, at via Roma 1; the Fontanini hall has wooden shelving from 1742. Among the codices are the so-called Byzantine Bible, with miniatures between West and East, an Inferno by Dante from the Fontanini bequest and a Canzoniere by Petrarch from the late fifteenth century. Foscolo, Nievo and Carducci passed through it. During the Great War the most precious holdings were sent to Lucca, in twelve crates. You get in with the guided visit, or on Friday afternoon without booking:
• according to the Library, in 2026, for groups of 5 to 15 people on Thursdays and Fridays at 10:30, by booking and "planned, but not guaranteed", lasting about 45 minutes; the ticket costs 4 euros, 2 euros for students up to 26. You book on telephone 0432 946560 or at info@guarneriana.it
• every Friday from 15:00 to 17:30 you can go in without booking, for a fee, and every last Sunday of the month at 11:30 there is a visit by booking: for both, the price is given by the Ufficio Turistico Pro San Daniele
• the old section is closed in August. The modern section, at via Roma 10, is the town library, with open shelves and books for young people
• Sant'Antonio Abate, at via Garibaldi 28, was the church of the Hospital of Sant'Antonio, which stood in the building opposite. Consecrated in 1308, damaged by the earthquake of 1348 and rebuilt from 1441, it has the Venetian Gothic facade in Istrian stone of 1470, with the pierced rose window and the lunette with Saint Anthony the Abbot, Saint John the Baptist and Saint Anthony of Padua, and mosaic stained-glass windows that the Comune says are the first of their kind in Friuli. Inside, between 1497 and 1498 Pellegrino painted the Christ, the Evangelists and the Prophets of the vault, signing on the choir window; between 1513 and 1520 the Crucifixion, the choir arch and the Annunciation; between 1520 and 1522 the choir, with the Washing of the Feet and the Descent into Limbo. Today the church is no longer used for worship, and the Comune writes that entry is free. Saint Anthony is the patron saint of pork butchers, and he is painted with the pig: in Friulian someone who wanders about doing nothing is called a "purcit di Sant'Antoni", Saint Anthony's pig
• The Duomo of San Michele Arcangelo, on the square with the flight of steps, is by Domenico Rossi, built between 1707 and 1725 and consecrated in 1806, with the facade inspired by Palladio and the bronze doors by the local sculptor Nino Gortan, from 1982. Inside the baptismal font by Carlo da Carona, from 1510, and at the first altar the Trinity, a copy painted by Domenico Fabris in 1870 from an original by Pordenone. The bell tower, left unfinished, was begun in 1531 to a design by Giovanni da Udine, who also designed the sixteenth-century fountain of piazza Cattaneo
• The Portonat, at the end of via Garibaldi, is the only town gate to have survived whole: from 1579, to a design by Andrea Palladio. Along via Roma is the Casa del Trecento, the fourteenth-century house, the only house of the medieval village to have come down intact, with a small museum of the two wars, and the church of Santa Maria della Fratta, from about 1350, with the fresco of the falcon hunt
• The castle hill: climbing from via San Sebastiano you reach the esplanade where the castle stood, of which a tower and the earthworks remain, laid out as a park. From there you see the moraine amphitheatre with its castles, the Friulian plain and the Julian Alps. Next to it is the church of San Daniele in Castello, from the eighteenth century, with the bell tower made in 1486 from a tower of the castle and, behind the apse, a copy of a twelfth-century bas-relief of the Adoration of the Magi; excavations under the church have found pig bones from the eleventh to the eighth century BC. The park is the one of the summer concerts and the Christmas market
• The Museo del Territorio, at via Udine 4, in the former Dominican convent next to the sanctuary of the Madonna di Strada, has an archaeological section from the eleventh century BC to the early Middle Ages, sacred art, a Jewish section and the bequests; from the church of Sant'Antonio comes the Christ among the doctors of the Temple, detached and brought here. According to the Pro San Daniele the ticket costs 2.50 euros. In the sanctuary of the Madonna di Strada, Baroque, is the Madonna and Child that Pellegrino painted in 1506
• The markets: every Wednesday morning the weekly market along viale Trento Trieste, every Saturday from 8:00 to 12:30 the farmers' market of local produce at Le Corti, in viale Trento Trieste, and every last Sunday of the month the antiques market in the streets of the centre, from 8:00 to 18:00, with up to 71 stalls
• Aria di Festa is no longer held: the prosciutto festival at the end of June, born in 1985, closed in 2023 after thirty-seven editions. The Consortium announced it on 9 February 2024, writing that by now "almost every day of the year" there is a festive air in San Daniele; since then it has taken the prosciutto around Italy with "Aria di San Daniele"
• The lake of Ragogna, a couple of kilometres north of the town, divided between San Daniele and Ragogna, is the only inter-moraine lake in Friuli Venezia Giulia and a Natura 2000 site: you can go birdwatching, there are water chestnuts and many dragonflies, and around it run the paths marked by the signs of the lake trails
• The castle of Ragogna, on the hill of San Pietro above the Tagliamento, controlled the ford of the river on the Roman road to Noricum: restored, it has battlemented walls with the north gate, the keep, the courtyard with the well and the excavations of the parish church of San Pietro. According to the Consortium for the protection of historic castles it is open on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays. At Ragogna the Museo civico has a section on the Great War: in autumn 1917, after Caporetto, the battle of the Tagliamento was fought between Ragogna, San Daniele and Forgaria, and four itineraries tell its story on the ground
• The fortress of Osoppo, about twelve kilometres to the north-east, stands on an isolated hill above the Tagliamento: in 1848 its defenders held out against the Austrians for almost seven months, and from 1900 it was part of the defences of the upper Tagliamento. A national monument since 1923 and decommissioned in 1951, you climb on foot by the road built by the French at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which starts from via Fabris; at the top the esplanade with the viewpoint over Gemona, the powder magazine, the south and north batteries with their tunnel corridors. You need walking shoes, long trousers, water and a torch for the tunnels. From the A23 motorway you leave at Gemona-Osoppo
• To the north-west, about ten kilometres away, the nature reserve of the lake of Cornino, at Forgaria, with the griffon vultures of the Progetto Grifone, open on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays; to the south, towards Udine, at Fagagna, the Oasi dei Quadris with the white storks and the museum of country life Cjase Cocèl
• Trout: in San Daniele there is not only prosciutto. At Villanova the Pighin ponds for sport fishing, and between San Daniele and Aonedis, in the area of the prosciuttifici, the Friultrota shop with the Regina di San Daniele, the cold-smoked trout

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