LIENZ
Lienz is located at the merging of the Drautal, Pusteria and Iseltal valleys and is the regional capital of Eastern Tyrol. Owing to the magnificence of its landscape and of its historical town centre, Lienz gained the surname of “Pearl of the Dolomites” and also of “Sunshine City”, in reference to its year-round mostly mild climate. From June to September the picturesque town centre is traffic free, allowing visitors to quietly enjoy the historical jewels of its monuments. Among the latter the Castello Bruck, which houses the town’s many-sided museum with its Egger Lienz Galleria, dedicated to this famous Tyrolese painter. Built in the course of the thirteenth-century, in old times it featured an important political landmark and was the residence of the Counts of Gorizia. Worth of admiration are the two-stories chapel, the late-Gothic frescoes and the Knights’ Room in Romanesque style, with its painted trussed ceiling which is partly in its original state. On the premises of the ancient Prisons, a small and surprising exhibit has been set up, called "creature della notte" (night’s creatures), dedicated to 15 different species of bats which set their natural habitat in the castle area. The “Phonomuseum”, housing old gramophones, turntables, radio sets and other devices able to reproduce music is worth visiting. An out-of-town excursion could bring the visitor to the well known archeological site of Aguntum.

FROM LIENZ TO MONTE ZONCOLAN

Ampezzo
The Ampezzo village, with its houses built under stone arcades, its wooden balconies and  picturesque landings, forms a belvedere over the Lumiei torrent and the Monte Corno, surrounded with luxuriant forests of beech wood, spruce and silver fir trees. The eighteenth-century’s San Daniele church exhibits paintings by Nicola Grassi, while a rich collection of fossils and samples of 450 millions years’ old rocks can be seen in the Museo Geologico della Carnia. The Sauris lake is not far from there and is worth a trip as well as the mountain village, surely one of the nicest in the Carnia area, birthplace of the world renown cured ham of San Daniele.

Forni di Sopra e Forni di Sotto
Forni di Sopra, the first village, was bombed by the Germans in 1944 and rebuilt after the war, and is housing in the Santa Maria del Rosario Church a Madonna col Bambino ascribed to Domenico di Tolmezzo. Nine kilometres up north, in an idyllic valley, the second village, Forni di Sopra, features the approach route to the Parco Naturale delle Dolomiti Friulane. In the vicinity of Cella a great number of small but charming little churches such as the Parrocchiale dell’Assunta with its carved altar dated of the middle of the fifteenth century, and the San Floriano Church with a touching series of frescoes by Gianfrancesco da Tolmezzo decorating the Presbytery, are worth visiting.

Zuglio
A Roman Colony since 50 b.C. under the name of Iulium Carnicum, Zuglio is the most important archeological site in the Mountains of Friuli, second only in that region to Aquileia. Excavations brought to the light the Forum with the arcades of a temple, a civilian basilica, ruins of private dwellings, and the baths. The many mosaics, bronze pieces and statues found on the site are kept in the Museo Archeologico Iulium Carnicum. From that point and following the route of the ancient Via Iulia Augusta, the road winds up to the Monte Croce Carnico Pass and in less than half an hour you are in Carinthia, reaching also within minutes Arta Terme, a famous spa which sulphureous springs which were already known in Roman times. Giosuè Carducci used to haunt that spa and during one of his stays he wrote the poem Il Comune Rustico.