Gemona, Venzone and Lake Cavazzo: mountain living half an hour from Udine

Gemona is the small town of the group, with the station, the shops and the secondary schools (4 sites and courses). Artegna and Osoppo sit on the flat towards Udine, Montenars higher up on its hillside. Venzone is the old village on the road to Austria; Bordano and Trasaghis face the Tagliamento and Lake Cavazzo.

The three best-known towns side by side: Gemona, Venzone or Bordano. The profiles: Gemona, Venzone, Bordano.

• Hospitals: the nearest A&E, at Tolmezzo, is 19 min from Bordano and 21 min from Trasaghis. Udine, the referral hospital for heart attacks and strokes, is 36 min from Bordano and 32 min from Trasaghis; within the mountain area no town is closer to a hub than Trasaghis.
• Lake and slopes: ARPA monitors two bathing spots on Lake Cavazzo, both in Trasaghis; for skiing, the Zoncolan is 47 min from Bordano.
• Sea: the nearest beach, the bay of Sistiana, is 1 h 07 by car from Bordano, just over an hour; 56 min from Osoppo.
• The catch: at the 2011 census 32% of homes in Bordano and 33% in Trasaghis had no resident (holiday homes included). Bordano, population 697, has a pharmacy, a primary school and a supermarket; everything else is in Gemona.

Gemona's Casa della Comunità, a primary-care centre, has been open since 1 December 2025. The first-aid point (PPI) at the same site, however, no longer appears on the regional list of active A&E departments and first-aid points; in October 2026 its closure was the subject of a formal question in the regional council. For 10 towns, about 33,000 people, it had been the nearest door. Today Gemona residents go to the A&E at San Daniele (23 min), as do those in Osoppo (16 min). Emergencies: 112; out-of-hours doctor: 116117 (drive times for every town).

Seismic zone 1 covers 7 towns out of 7: every one. The 1976 earthquake, whose main shock on 6 May reached magnitude 6.5, killed 965 people; Gemona, Osoppo, Montenars and Trasaghis felt intensity 9-10 on the MCS scale. At the time Gemona and Osoppo were not even classified as seismic; the Civil Protection Department says Friuli was reborn in little more than 15 years.

The census still shows it. The smallest share of pre-1971 buildings anywhere in Friuli Venezia Giulia belongs to Artegna (2%); Bordano has 69% of its buildings from 1981 onwards, Montenars 69%. Recent does not automatically mean safe: the design and the building records are what count (what to ask).

Gemona recorded 113 sales in 2025 (+16.0%), Trasaghis 32, twice the year before. Official values have not moved, except in Gemona (+3.1%). In 2024 people moving in from elsewhere in Italy outnumbered those leaving by 72; deaths, however, were 129 more than births.

• Rain and frost: 2,140 mm a year in the median town, 2,340 mm in Bordano; 75 frost nights, 92 in Montenars.
• Sun: on 21 December Osoppo gets 8 h 33 min, Venzone 5 h 15 min (winter sun).
• Fibre: almost universal in Gemona, Bordano and Trasaghis; 7.4% of households in Artegna, 14.2% in Venzone, 15.1% in Osoppo.
• Trains: Gemona, Venzone and Artegna have services; Osoppo station does not. The Mi.Co.Tra. runs twice a day each way.
• Property tax: in Bordano and Venzone the ILIA rate on a second home is 1.06%. Every owner, wherever they live, may register one home in Friuli Venezia Giulia with the regional government as their «first dwelling»; registered that way, it pays 0.70% (the rules).