Friuli Venezia Giulia in numbers: what kind of region you are moving to

• Small places. Half the towns have fewer than 2,298 residents: shops, GPs and schools sit in the larger centres, and the distance to them matters as much as the house.
• An older population. 28% of residents are 65 or over, and the typical town's average age is 49.7. Since 2001, 141 towns have lost people, including 57 of the 58 mountain towns.
• Foreign residents: 10% of the population, rising in industrial towns such as Monfalcone (32.4%).
• Owner-occupiers: 77% of households lived in a home they owned (2011 census).

• More mountain than you would think. Regional law classes 91 towns out of 215 as wholly mountainous (this site groups 58 of them as its mountain area), yet half the town halls stand below 121 m: people live on the plain and in the hills. The highest town hall is Sappada's, at 1,242 m.
• Between two borders. From Udine, Ljubljana is 1 h 49 away, Klagenfurt 1 h 48, Munich 4 h 49; from Trieste, Ljubljana is 1 h 11. For every town and every starting city, see how far Friuli is from home.

• Price: €790/m² for a flat in normal condition in the typical town (OMI, first half of 2026), so €200,000 buys a median 255 m². The lowest value, €520/m², is found in the Natisone valleys; the highest belongs to Lignano Sabbiadoro, at €3,040/m² (OMI values for every town).
• Sales: 17,922 homes changed hands across the region in 2025.
• Empty homes: 21% of dwellings were nobody's registered address when the 2011 census was taken; in 33 towns it was half or more, between holiday homes and villages that are emptying. The 2021 regional figure, measured differently, is 24% (Italy 27%). For buyers in the mountains, that means plenty of choice.
• Property tax: there is no IMU here; its place is taken by ILIA, created by the Region and collected by the town councils. Depending on the town, the 2026 rate on a second home ranges from 0.76% to 1.06%. Every taxpayer, resident in the region or not, can name one dwelling as their first second home and pay at most 0.70% on it, by declaring it online through the Region's application, with a deadline of 30 June the year after.
• Land register: ownership is recorded in a land book, the tavolare system, in 43 towns from Trieste and Gorizia to the eastern lowlands and Tarvisio, plus the eastern part of Pontebba.

• A&E: 144 towns are within 20 minutes of a 24-hour A&E, home to 87% of the population; the furthest is Erto e Casso, at 1 h 02.
• Hub hospitals for heart attack and stroke are in Udine, Trieste and Pordenone: 71% of residents have one within half an hour (hospitals and A&E).
• Full fibre: it reaches 74.2% of households in the region, against 82.9% across Italy; yet 71 towns have it for nine households in ten or more, 24 of them in the mountains (fibre, town by town).

• Two climates. By the sea January averages up to 6.1 °C (Muggia); in Tarvisio it falls to −2.1 °C. Frost days range from 10 to 143 a year, and the plain freezes at night as often as Vienna: 67 days in Udine, 62 in Vienna (winter and summer, town by town).
• Rain: from 970 mm a year on the coast to 2,590 mm in Taipana, beneath the Julian Pre-Alps.
• Earthquakes: every town sits in seismic class 1, 2 or 3: 32 in the first, 108 in the second, 75 in the third, none in the fourth. The 1976 earthquake killed 965 people, and in the towns at its epicentre many houses date from the rebuilding (earthquakes and seismic zones).
• Water: 11% of buildings lie in areas that floods reach on average once every 100–200 years, mostly in the southern lowlands (floods and landslides).

• Tourism: 11,028,200 tourist nights in 2025, a third of them in Lignano Sabbiadoro (3,702,600).
• Foreigners in their own homes: of the nights foreign visitors spend in the region, 10% are in a home they own, while the Italian figure is 4%. Austrians account for 29% of those nights and Germans for 28%: buying here from abroad is a well-trodden path.

To choose a town, start from the four big choices and the areas, and read the buying process in Italy.