Every design for Pordenone / Pordenon

Under the Palazzo Ricchieri and in front of the town hall, digs have turned up traces of people from Carinthia who lived here in the early Middle Ages, and the old centre still gathers around that spot and the cathedral of San Marco. The town began as a river port on the Noncello, and its name, from Portus Naonis, means just that.

What makes Pordenone unusual is how often it has changed hands and reinvented itself. It was a Habsburg enclave inside Friuli, then part of Venice, then a cotton town once the railway arrived, and after the Second World War the home of Zanussi, which became a world name in household appliances. Through it all the water has stayed: the lowland here is full of springs and resurgences. Today the town is lively with culture, from the Museo civico d'arte and the Galleria Harry Bertoia to the Palazzo del fumetto, and out at Torre the Villa Romana di Torre di Pordenone shows that Romans farmed here long before the port.

And always, at the edge of the centre, the Noncello sliding quietly past the old landing places.