Family Friulano

Take the family to Italy’s sea and mountain borderland in Friuli Venezia-Giulia and stay in the enchanting Casa del Grivo.

We are driving north-eastwards from Udine, the Friulian Dolomites beginning to climb upwards from plains that roll all the way south to the shallow lagoons of the Adriatic, when my 7-year-old daughter lifts her head up from her book and asks, “What are we going to do for my birthday, daddy?”

It’s a fair question and one we have learnt to expect over the years, when come the start of the summer holidays we tend to find ourselves on the road far from home. Far away too from friends, parties, dress-up boxes and all the trappings of birthdays that fall at more convivial times of year. Late July birthdays at least for the first 16 years of life tend to be with family on the fly.

My answer is full of vague hopefulness and probably what my daughter has come to expect in equal measure.

“We’ll just have to wait and see my darling.”

Whether bent on conquest or leisure, many simply pass through this lesser-known, lesser-visited far north-eastern corner of Italy. But those who take a moment to pause in Friuli Venezia Giulia are well rewarded. A brief inspection of number plates at toll points on the autostrada and you realise you are rubbing shoulders with Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Belgians, Austrians, Germans, French (and Italian too): this has long been a crossroads of Europe. Sometimes it’s a relief not to be in the bosom of Italy, but among her outer reaches. Venice is barely two hours’ drive to the south but point your Fiat Panda in any other direction and you can have this borderlands part of Italy all to yourself.

The Friulians are proud of their distinctive identity and the names of villages and towns are written in both Italian and Friuliano, which to the untrained eye bears more than a passing resemblance to Slovenian, only a hop and a skip away in the next valley. They have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with Italy as their mother country. During a conversation with the owner of the mountain rifugio at Pizzeto just below the top of one of the major peaks, Montajur, it was with a dewy look in his eye that he pointed to the mountain pass which a young lieutenant Rommel had taken in WW1 to surprise the Italians.

My daughter is less easily impressed, having climbed to the top of Montajur in only her flipflops (flashback to the start of the walk and exasperated tones: “Emily, where are you trainers?”). Speaking more majestically, from this vantage point - once the curtains of mist are swept away - it’s possible to see deep into Slovenia to the east, the mighty Austrian Alps to the north and south all the way down to the relaxed resort town of Grado at the top of the Adriatic. “We can call it ‘Flip-Flop Mountain’”, says my 5-year-old son with a posy of wildflowers in his hand.

But whether you’re feeling like a mountain day or a beach day, the best place to call home is Casa del Grivo. It was Serena’s parents, newly-weds Toni and Paola, who in the 1980s rescued this turn of the century country house from ruin and created a bucolic ideal in the foothills of the Friulian Dolomites. On arrival, guests are presented with a bottle of the last vintage of Toni’s homemade wine, a light frizzante red. From the start the idea was all about communality, everyone pitching in, first to get the place on its feet using the original materials as far as possible, and then in the way of life that followed. The result was a home to make the heart glad. Rising on three floors, the house possesses a country grandeur and a fine wooden balcony runs along its length, from which a verdant fringe overflows in barely tamed abundance. There’s no better place to sit first thing in the morning and gently wake up, a cup of coffee in hand, listening to the birdsong from the wooded hills all around and looking down the valley towards the village of Faedis, church bells ringing, and further still into fertile plains and the beginnings of Udine in the distance. Keep the shutters open front and back and in the early evening a silvery breeze passes over the lawns and vegetable gardens and refreshes everything in Sun and Moon, the two well-appointed guest apartments, on its way from mountain to sea.

Children run free at Casa del Grivo, and we are woken each morning by our son and daughter pressing us to go downstairs and join the family of languid cats who roam the garden. Here a majestic tree sets the tone. Having once been partially floored by a storm coming out of the mountains, a stout piece of timber, as though cut from a ship’s mast, now props it up in a state of permanent recline. Still blossoming and wondrous for climbing, swinging, and hanging like monkeys, it is a symbol of what Serena and her parents have achieved here. Sit beneath it for dinner al fresco, read, write or merely breathe in the perfume of the garden. Serena can often be found in the morning with a freshly picked bouquet of flowers. Having been born in Casa del Grivo and grown up here, she shares the remembered joys of her own childhood with any children staying in the house. One morning she plucks a handful of lemon leaves and gives them to our daughter Emily, who immediately rushes upstairs and insists we make the most exquisite lemon tea infusion.

Once you decide it’s time to venture forth, nearby Cividale del Friuli is most engaging. Here the Ponte del Diavolo crosses the river Natisone and the view from bridge is reminiscent of Florence in the way the buildings come right to the edge of the ravine. Like so much of Friuli Venezia Giulia, the town traces its origins back to Julius Caesar, whose statue stands imperiously in the main square close to the Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta and the Museo Archeologico. In summer, Cividale is home to Mittlefest, a festival inaugurated in 1991 with performances celebrating the union of Italian and Central European culture. South of the bridge, a meal in the courtyard of the atmospheric restaurant, Antico Leon d’Oro is another fine way of absorbing the cultural nuances of the region. A passegiata may take you down the steps to the river where you find local lads or pairs of amorous couples. From this perspective the whole town rises above you and it’s a good spot to teach young ones how to skim stones across the gentle waters of the Natisone - until they start skimming them into each other and then it’s time to head for supper.

A walk up into the hills from Casa del Grivo takes you into the quiet heart of the region. The surrounding area is deeply wooded, but with a map in hand and following a mixture of signs and instincts, you could easily spend an entire day discovering little treasures. Pious feet once trod these paths, and it can feel a bit like a pilgrimage walking up steep mossy stone steps to find ancient little stone chapels to San Rocco or San Maddalena. If you ask about locally, a key can be procured and you can enter for yourself these humble yet sacred spaces, many with faded frescoes on the walls, a simple altar and latticed windows. Dwell in silence and breathe in a little mysticism high in the hills.

The source of the river Grivo itself is at hand and the rock pools a short walk from the tiny hamlet of Stremiz are well worth a visit. Only the hardy will take the plunge into water cooled deep in the bones of the earth, but locals come for fly-fishing and will show you the best spots. As we pause by one such pool, footprints of sunlight padding down to the water’s edge, we see downstream a perfectly intact brick-built Roman bridge. It’s looks for all the world like something out of Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill, standing as it ever did, now half lost to obscurity, its ways forgotten to the forest. It’s an ageless moment: the local fisherman gracefully casts out into the sylvan quiet of the river valley while my wife and I sit in the stillness watching our two children utterly absorbed in collecting stones and wading into the goose-pimpled deep of those faerie pools.

At weekends, a handful of the local farms that cling to the hills above open for business. Right at the top of the valley and found at the end of a road so long and winding that you begin to doubt yourself, you will find Azienda Agricola Pantanali run by a warm couple friendly with Serena. We arrive to find a table of locals, mostly fellow farmers, who are already way past lunch and onto their third grappa by the look of things. They look up at us stranieri with friendly bemusement. In my best Italian I understand that we are going to be served up whatever is on the menu that day. This turns out to be a cold platter of cheese and variations of prosciutto, followed by diaphanously thin slices of rabbit. These my children first balk at (recalling images of lop-eared fluffy darlings at the petting farms back home), but then find quite palatable with the warm gravy sauce that accompanies the meal. Everything comes from the farm, and even with the fabled dry-cured ham from San Daniele just down the road, you won’t find better value in all of Italy.

As we eat, more locals arrive, this time with two lads a little older than our two, who turn their attention to the table-football out on the patio with great shouts of bravado. My son, William, plucks up the courage to give them a game and for a while there is an intense European bonhomie up in those Friulian hills. Emily, meanwhile, goes exploring and finds to her delight a nursery of tiny tortoises creeping around their den, watched on by a rather beautiful cat. I am offered a grappa for the journey home, managing a polite sip of the intestine-enflaming digestif, but it’s more the warmth of the place that we take with us on the descent as we pass a staggering chap who has made the wise decision that Sunday to take the slow way back. What coming here is all about, really.

Small wonder then that Serena made the decision during lockdown to leave her life in Rome and career as a stage actress and return to the family home. She now runs the place with her partner, Giulio, who each morning is only too happy to help you plan the day’s itinerary. They want to share with you the places they love themselves, and under their stewardship Casa del Grivo is experiencing its own small renaissance. It is now in the hands of the new generation, who want to keep the spirit of the place as it was, while bringing their own vision where guests can be as communal or autonomous as they wish. So they can sit beneath the tree in garden, or pour over books in the library, or sit around the extraordinary open fireplace in the centre of the living room. Or else they can retreat to their own wood-beamed apartment and rural bedsteads and enjoy the contentment of their own slice of Friulian country living. Everywhere there is the heart of the place that Serena carries with her and cherishes as she does her childhood. “The vision is new,” she says, “But the care and the soul are the same.”

It turns out we couldn’t have planned it any better. On the morning of Emily’s eighth birthday, she comes bursting into our room desperate to show us something. Dutifully we follow. Passing along the balcony in our pyjamas, revelling already in the warmth of an Italian July (another legacy of Julius), we make our way to the top of the central staircase. There suspended across the full width of the stairs is a wonderful surprise banner with graceful rainbow-coloured swirls of words hand-painted by Serena declaring: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY!”

Later we are greeted by Serana and Giulio in the garden who, upon hearing that Emily has declared her birthday a beach-day, offer us their choice selection of where to go on the coast. We are tempted by the secret local spot close to Trieste, the unspoilt rocky cove with the transparent aqua-marine waters, but for an 8-year-old it’s hard to get past sea, sand and ice-cream.

We spend the day in Grado, noticeably hotter by the coast, paddling in the Adriatic, whose bath-like shallows stretch it would seem all the way to Croatia. On the way we pass the roadside Roman ruins of Aquileia. In his excellent La Serenissima: The Story of Venice, Jonathan Keats explains how the civilisation here was eventually to flee the marauding armies of Attila the Hun in 400 CE and take refuge on the shores of a broad lagoon in the North-West Adriatic. They settled in greatest numbers in a cluster of islets known as the rivus altus - literally ‘high bank’ – now more commonly recognised as Venice’s Rialto. A few more birthdays may yet have to pass, however, before ancient ruins become a must-stop visit for children desperate for their first glimpse of the sea. Later in the day, we idle through the harbour and old town of Grado with what William announces as a champion Nutella gelato. On the way back to our nattily parked Panda, he and I sneak off to a local pasticerria and buy a fruits-of-the-forest cake, which the chef kindly inscribes with the words, “Auguri, Emilia!”

It's late by the time we get back to Casa del Grivo. Serena and Giulia are out seeing friends, so we have the whole darkened house to ourselves. Coming from somewhere nearby, we can hear the music of celebration and a party in full swing. We sense in the latent air the hot weather is about to break and so make the decision to go inside immediately. After a bit of comedy fumbling, we turn on a desk-lamp in the library that gives out only enough light to reveal the grainy shadows of bookcases, reading tables and chairs and to guide us to the dining room beyond. Here we find a candle and sit down at one of the small wooden tables. Suddenly the storm is upon us, silencing the music from the neighbours as everyone dashes indoors. The rain starts to hammer down, roaring and reverberating across the roof and old wooden beams. There is an almighty crack of thunder. But we feel cocooned in our valley, in our country Friulian home, in the memories of Serena and in the glimmering circle of candlelight. The four of us sit round the table, grown-ups on one side, children on the other, our hair encrusted with salt, the warmth of the day still upon us, our skin still taught from the sea. Still the rain comes. With theatrical discretion I open a promisingly sized white box and light the number 8 candle in the middle of the cake. In that moment the candle is the only source of illumination in the warm family dark of the dining room, but I see its flickering glow in my daughter’s eyes too. She smiles. It’s time.

“Happy Birthday to you,” three of us begin to sing. “Tanti Auguri a te…”