Paluzza

Paluzza is the main village of the Val Bût, in Carnia, and its territory climbs to the state border at the pass of Monte Croce Carnico. In the First World War the front ran up there, and it was the women who carried ammunition and food to the trenches: the portatrici carniche, who went up with a loaded basket on their backs and came down to do it again the next day. One of them, Maria Plozner Mentil, was killed on the fifteenth of February 1916. The alpine barracks of Paluzza bears her name and is the only barracks of the Italian Army named after a woman; decommissioned in 2001, it was handed to the comune, which pulled down the unsafe part and gave the rest to the Alpini group, to the mountain rescue who train their dog units there, to the civil protection and to a sports club. Just outside Timau stands the ossuary temple of the Santissimo Crocifisso, built in 1936.

On the hill above the village is the Moscarda tower, in the place called Enfretors, which means «between the towers»: the second one stood on the other bank of the river and was demolished in 1836. They belonged to the Castrum Muscardum, the network of fortifications raised in the middle of the thirteenth century by the patriarch of Aquileia Gregorio da Montelongo, which also served as a customs post. On the same hill are the archpriest's church of San Daniele, remains of Roman fortifications and blockhouses of the Great War; the tower, restored, is today an exhibition seat of the Carnia museum system, with an alpine botanical garden beside it. In the hamlet of Timau — Tischlbong — a German dialect of Carinthian type is spoken: a German-speaking island in the middle of Carnia, while alongside Italian in the rest of the comune the Carnic variety of Friulian is used. Paluzza is known for its ceramics and terracotta, and it is the birthplace of the Olympic champions Manuela and Giorgio Di Centa and of the middle-distance runner Venanzio Ortis.