Patron saint festival In 293 days
Feast of Saint Oswald
📅 Every year, on 5 August
On 5 August Sauris, a municipality of 419 inhabitants in the province of Udine, celebrates its patron Saint Oswald, king and martyr (sant'Osvaldo re e martire).
Sauris, Zahre in German, is a German-speaking island inside Carnia, and it has kept itself because for centuries you could only get here on foot. Legend says it was founded by two German soldiers weary of war; more probably people came from the Lesachtal and the Puster valley, in the thirteenth century. Italian, Friulian and Saurano are spoken here, and in 2013 the town council formally adopted a spelling for the last of these, validated by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and then delivered to every family in the village. The church of Sauris di Sotto is dedicated to Saint Oswald, as at Sappada and in the other German-speaking islands.
The lake you see today was not there. Between 1941 and 1948, in the middle of the war, the dam on the Lumiei was built, and since the men were at the front three hundred New Zealand prisoners of war worked on it too. The water submerged the hamlet of La Maina, whose ruins are still down there. Sauris was the highest comune in the region until 2017, when Sappada returned to Friuli after more than a century and a half outside it: and took the record away.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Sauris 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Sauris
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Sauris, but an easy day trip away.
chiesa dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo 📍 Luni · 400 m Rothari levelled the Byzantine chapel; in the eleventh century Nicola rebuilt on its highest point. santuario di Nostra Signora del Mirteto 📍 Luni · 1.1 km In 1537 a painting wept tears of blood: from that grew the sanctuary above Ortonovo. chiesa di San Lorenzo 📍 Luni · 1.3 km Built between 1621 and 1645 on the ruins of a castle, a perpetual abbey since 1714. chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena 📍 Castelnuovo Magra · 2.5 km Three naves on eight columns of Carrara marble, under a portal carved in 1671. Palazzo Amati Ingolotti Cornelio 📍 Castelnuovo Magra · 2.5 km A marchese rebuilt it for his duchess wife; its sixteenth-century cellars now pour the local wine. Luna 📍 Luni · 2.9 km Rome's marble port: forum, theatre and an amphitheatre for 7,000, at the mouth of the Magra.