Reana del Rojale

The aqueduct that supplies the city of Udine begins here, above Zompitta; and a little further along, on the river Torre, are the intake works of the roggia of Udine and the roggia of Palma, which cross the middle Friulian plain and pass through the city. Holding that water in your hand has counted for a great deal in these parts: in the neighbouring comune of Povoletto, the family that controlled the intake of those same canals was called the family of the lords of the water. Reana is made of small settlements strung out at the foot of the Carnic and Julian Prealps, closed off to the east by the Torre — Reana, Qualso, Zompitta, Cortale, Vergnacco, Valle, Ribis, Rizzolo and Remugnano, which is where the town hall stands. The oldest of them in the documents is Vergnacco, named in the twelve hundreds as Verniacum; its church, dedicated to Saint Thomas and Saint Mark, appears in a document of 1360.

What this comune does, it does every year. At Qualso, at Christmas, a life-size nativity is set up in the main square. At Vergnacco, in the last two weeks of June, there is an international symposium of sculpture in pietra piasentina, and the works stay in the village's sculpture park; in 2012, for the fifteenth of those symposia, Gina Lollobrigida came as guest of honour. On the Saturday of the second week of January the philharmonic band of Vergnacco gives a concert whose Friulian name means in the name of God, and it has done so since 1930. At Ribis, between the end of September and the beginning of October, there is the potato fair. Two things, on the other hand, have gone: from 1927 to 1959 the Udine-Tarcento tramway stopped here, and people called it the white tram; and the station on the Udine-Tarvisio railway was closed in 1987, and its passenger building now does something else. During the war the territory was caught up in the Friulian Resistance, with the Garibaldi and the Osoppo brigades. Here, alongside Italian, people speak Friulian.