Italy is a land of regional differences. An instant glance at Sicily, Venice and Rome will tell you that Italians speak, live and eat differently in different regions.

Friuli-Venezia Giulia displays this diversity on a more minute scale. Like its hybridized name, the northeastern region is a patchwork of provinces, cities and towns with diverse populations. Its inhabitants take an enormous amount of pride in their ethnic and cultural makeup, in the languages they speak and in their ancient religious and folk traditions. The relatively small Valcanale area represents this cultural diversity exceptionally well. Its inhabitants speak Italian and the ancient language Furlan as well as German and Slovenian, which have seeped through the porous borders that Friuli shares with Austria and Slovenia. An estimated 50 percent of the regional population speaks Furlan on a daily basis, and even more speak Slovenian. German is less prevalent though the tiny communities of Sauris and Timau are known as German-speaking "ethnic islands." Sauris maintains the oldest Carnevale celebration in all of the Alps, in which a masked figure knocks on doors with a broomstick and participants parade through town wearing ancient wooden masks.

Trieste, the region's largest city, is located on the Adriatic coast. Thanks to glamorous palazzi and sprawling piazzas built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Trieste has a Central European grandeur unlike any other Italian city. Ornate Viennese coffeehouses are very popular and have been for more than a century. Italian writers Italo Svevo, Umberto Saba and Claudio Magris made Caffè San Marco famous. One-time resident James Joyce made a habit of having breakfast at Pasticceria Pirona.

Coffee-obsessed triestini take pride in the local coffee company Illy, whose founder is credited with having invented the first automatic, pressed-air espresso machine, which he called the illetta, in 1935.The province of Gorizia, together with Trieste, composes the formerly separate region of Venezia Giulia. At one time in its tumultuous history, the border between Italy and Yugoslavia split the city of Gorizia right down the middle. Udine and Pordenone exhibit elements of Venetian influence in their architecture while the rugged northern swath of the region, Carnia, is dominated by the Dolomite Mountains and parts of the Alps. Aquileia is considered one of the finest examples of an early Roman city-it flourished under the rule of Augustus Caesar. Friuli's name comes from this era in history. The word is an evolution of Forum Julii, the name Julius Caesar gave to the city of Cividale in 53 B.C.

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