The Carinthian Door
From Vienna to Ravenna by train. The first door in our twelve-month program.
This is the first trunk in the Doors to Italy program. It runs from Vienna or Villach across the Carnic Alps at Tarvisio Boscoverde, descends into Friuli at Udine, takes a half-day to read the Lombard capital at Cividale, drops to the Adriatic at Trieste for three nights, then rides the regional line south through the Po delta at Comacchio and ends in Ravenna in front of the mosaics that closed the western Roman world.
The trunk is seven days at a workable pace and can be extended to ten if Salento is the eventual horizon. Most travellers will only do the Friulian half (Tarvisio to Trieste, four days). The Adriatic half (Trieste to Ravenna, three days) can be done separately, in either direction, on the same regional rail map.
Where the Italia in Tour pass works on this route and where it does not is explained at /journal/the-carinthian-door. Short version: the OeBB EuroCity from Vienna and the Micotra cross-border service are off the pass; everything south of Udine is on it.
- 1Tarvisio BoscoverdeFriuli-Venezia Giulia · Italy1.9 / 10
The first Italian station. EuroCity from Vienna takes about six hours; the Micotra regional from Villach takes ninety minutes and is the cheaper alternative. Tarvisio is a working ski-and-railway town in the trilingual corner where Italy meets Austria and Slovenia. No need to overnight unless you arrive late.
- 2UdineFriuli-Venezia Giulia · Italy1 night2.4 / 10
Trenitalia Regionale to Udine in about two hours, through the Val Canale and past Venzone. Udine is the Friulian capital, Habsburg until 1797, Venetian for three hundred years before that, and the literary home of Pier Paolo Pasolini, who wrote his Friulian verse here. The arcades on Piazza Liberta and the Tiepolos in the Palazzo Patriarcale are the evening walk.
- 3Cividale del FriuliFriuli-Venezia Giulia · Italy1 night2.7 / 10
Twenty minutes east of Udine by Micotra regional, in the foothills of the Julian Alps above the Natisone river. Cividale was the first Lombard capital in Italy (568 AD) and the Tempietto Longobardo is a UNESCO World Heritage site that most travellers have never heard of. Cross the Devil Bridge and have lunch at one of the trattorie in via Borgo Brossana. Frico, gubana, Ribolla Gialla.
- 4Trieste, through its writersFriuli-Venezia Giulia · Italy3 nights4.5 / 10
Back through Udine and south to Trieste in just under two hours. Three nights is the right minimum — one for Joyce and Svevo at the LETS museum, one for the Carso and the osmizze, one for Duino and the Sentiero Rilke. The full destination page covers what to eat, where to stay and what the Bora actually does to the city in autumn.
- 5ComacchioEmilia-Romagna · Italy1 night2.6 / 10
Trieste to Venezia Mestre, change for Ferrara, then a short regional or bus to Comacchio. Three hours total. Comacchio is the Po delta town that calls itself a little Venice and earns it without the queue: thirteen bridges over three canals, a lagoon of fishermen and eel-smokers, the salt of Cervia an hour to the south. The Manifattura dei Marinati museum runs the old eel-marination plant as a working memorial.
- 6RavennaEmilia-Romagna · Italy1 night3.4 / 10
A short regional south, an hour at most. Ravenna closes the trunk in front of the Byzantine mosaics at San Vitale, Sant Apollinare Nuovo and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia — five UNESCO sites in a fifteen-minute walk. The Adriatic ferry to Pula and Zadar leaves from here in summer if Croatia is the next thing.