Chiopris-Viscone

Chiopris-Viscone is made of two villages whose very names have different origins. Chiopris appears in 1230 as Teupris, and comes from the Germanic Theudopert; Viscone is recorded much earlier, in 1020, as villa que vocatur Viscon, and its name looks Slavic, from Vysko, the short form of the personal name Vyseslav. Viscone grew along the Roman road that linked Aquileia to Cividale. For centuries both were hamlets of Medea: they broke away on 19 May 1866 to form today's comune.

Until 1918 this was Habsburg land, and its men went to war in Austrian uniform: most of them fought in Galicia, between present-day Poland and Ukraine, and their names were placed on a memorial tablet unveiled only on 22 March 2014, beside the monument to the fallen of all wars. Under the Kingdom of Italy the comune ended up in the province of Gorizia, and in 1923 it passed to that of Udine. Among the local traditions there is one that surprises: on 31 October, at Chiopris, they celebrate the Vilie dai sants, the eve of the saints, a custom of Celtic origin handed down from generation to generation, which fills the streets with carved pumpkins lit by candles.