Valvasone Arzene: a moated castle, a farming village and the Tagliamento, by the numbers

Valvasone, the seat of the council, belongs to the club of the Borghi più belli d'Italia, the association of Italy's best-kept historic villages. Its castle stands inside a moat and the old town walls, with an eighteenth-century miniature theatre, and the main church, the duomo, keeps a sixteenth-century Venetian organ. Arzene lies a few kilometres away among the fields; a regional law (L.R. 20/2014) fused the two councils on 1 January 2015.

• Residents: average age 47.3, 11.4% foreign nationals, mean taxable income €23,000 per taxpayer (median municipality: €23,800).
• Housing: occupied homes averaged 120 m² at the 2011 census, against a regional median of 112 m²; 63% of residential buildings predate 1971.
• Everyday services (OpenStreetMap): 2 pharmacies, a primary and a lower secondary school; for the nearest supermarket count 2.3 km in a straight line.
• The area: the Pordenone plain.

OMI, the tax agency's price observatory, draws three zones here. Within the walls, around Piazza Mercato and Via Erasmo, ordinary homes are valued at €650/m² to €900/m². Outside them, Arzene included, the band is €600/m² to €850/m², and detached houses €700/m² to €900/m². In the farmland and its hamlets it is €600/m² to €800/m². Every half-year from early 2021 to early 2026 shows the same figures in every zone.

• What €200,000 buys: roughly 275 m² at OMI values, before purchase taxes and the notary (budget and floor space).
• Turnover: 45 sales in 2025, in an OMI market area of 18 municipalities stretching to Aviano, Maniago and Spilimbergo.
• Rent: OMI puts it at €3.1/m² a month; set against the price, that is 5.1% gross a year.

Italy's flat tax on rents (cedolare secca) is 21% on open-market leases and 10% on regulated-rent ones, but only in certain municipalities. Besides the high housing-pressure list, a 2014 decree adds places hit by a disaster with a national state of emergency between 2009 and 2014, provided the council is named in the emergency commissioner's decrees. Here the 2015 merger makes it a borderline case, and the answer is clean: Valvasone and Arzene are both listed, in decree 1/CD7/2010 (storms of May–June 2009) and 1/CD9/2011 (rain of early November 2010). The rate therefore covers the whole of today's municipality (the full list). The budget bill for 2027 proposes 5%, but it refers only to the high-pressure contracts: whether it will apply here is still open.

ILIA, the regional property tax, 2026 (council resolution of 30 December 2025):

On a regulated-rent lease the regional law cuts the bill to 75% of the amount (how ILIA works).

• Flood risk: the Tagliamento runs just east of the village. ISPRA, the national environment agency, puts 16% of the land in high-hazard flood areas, while medium-hazard zones contain 8.2% of its buildings: above the regional median of 4.9%, yet far below Casarsa (24.5%) or Codroipo (69.6%). For a given house the map matters, not the average (floods and landslides).
• Seismic zone: 2 on the regional scale.
• Sun: nothing blocks the horizon; on the shortest day, sunshine on the town hall lasts 8 h 38 min, effectively from sunrise to sunset.
• Climate: in a typical year 68 frosty nights, 41 hot days reaching 30 °C, rainfall of 1,400 mm.
• Internet: fibre to the home is available to 92.6% of households (regional median 77.9%).

Driving times without traffic:

• Cities: Pordenone 24 min, Udine 48 min, Trieste 1 h 33 min; the motorway at Pordenone in 21 min.
• Airports: Venice 1 h 10 min, Trieste 1 h 9 min.
• Beach and slopes: Bibione 1 h 2 min, Piancavallo 1 h 2 min.
• Hospitals: San Vito al Tagliamento 16 min, Pordenone 23 min, Udine 51 min for the most specialised care (hospitals and A&E).