Ronchi dei Legionari

This comune changed its name to commemorate a date. The place name is documented from 1229 in the Friulian form Ronches, and until 1925 the town was called Ronchi di Monfalcone; then the name was changed in memory of the twelfth of September 1919, when from here the legionaries led by Gabriele D'Annunzio set out for Fiume, together with deserters from the first battalion of the second grenadier regiment. A name seven hundred years old replaced by one that was six. The first mention of the place is far older: it is in the donation by which in 967 the emperor Otto I assigned it to the patriarch of Aquileia, under whose jurisdiction it stayed until 1420. Because of its position it was exposed to raids from the east, and in 1615, with the war of Gradisca, Ronchi and Selz were burned.

Under the runway of the airport, which is the region's main air terminal, there was a pre-Roman necropolis: it was found right beside it. Through here ran the via Gemina, the road towards the east, which crossed a watercourse — probably an old branch of the Isonzo delta — on a long stone bridge at the locality of Sochet; and in 1987, in the fields between Ronchi and Soleschiano, the remains came to light of a large country villa lived in and rebuilt over four centuries. The modern settlement, on the other hand, grew as a series of separate rural boroughs, and their names still say so: Cao de sora, Cao de mezo, Cao de soto, that is head above, head in the middle and head below. Among the new houses the low walls of the braide, the enclosed fields, survive. Here they speak bisiaco, a Venetian dialect with Friulian, Slovene and German influences, and some road signs are bilingual.