Grado

In Roman times Grado, known as ad Aquae Gradatae, was the first port for ships entering the Natissa river on their way upstream to Aquileia, and the remains of villas, inscriptions and sarcophagi still turn up. As the Western Empire weakened, people from Aquileia fled to the island; in 452, when the Huns attacked, Bishop Nicetas took refuge here, and Grado's first cathedral, the first church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and the baptistery date from that time. When the Lombards took Aquileia in 568, its metropolitan Paulinus moved to Byzantine-held Grado, and the transfer of the see was formalised in 579. Grado became known as the New Aquileia and was the home base of the patriarchate's fleet.

Early in the 7th century a rival patriarch was elected in the old Aquileia, and the two lines of patriarchs disputed authority for centuries; in the 11th century Patriarch Poppo of the old Aquileia sacked the island. In 1451 Pope Nicholas V moved the seat of the patriarchate to Venice, and Grado declined into a minor place. The English sacked it in 1810, burning the archives, and the French in 1812.

Austria acquired Grado in 1815 and kept it until 1918. In 1873 the doctor Giuseppe Barellai founded a seaside hospice for children here, and the island became a destination for sea-water cures, above all for Austrians. A road across the lagoon followed in 1905, and in 1936 a swing bridge finally ended the island's isolation. A national museum of underwater archaeology, built around the Roman merchant ship Julia Felix found off Grado in 1986, opened in December 2025.

Grado is called the 'first Venice' because of its place in the origins of Venetian civilisation, and its people speak a Venetian dialect, gradese, rather than the Friulian of the surrounding plain. The poet Biagio Marin, born in Grado, wrote about the island in that dialect, and a festival of songs in gradese has been held since 1946.

Religion and the lagoon shape the calendar. The Perdon de Barbana, the town's principal tradition, takes place on the first Sunday of July: a statue of the Madonna is carried from the basilica of Sant'Eufemia by a procession of boats decked with flags to the sanctuary on Barbana, in thanks for the end of a plague in 1237. The copper Archangel Michael on Sant'Eufemia's bell tower, the Anzolo, is the town's symbol.

The lagoon has its own culture. Fishermen once spent much of the year in casoni, simple thatched huts on the islands, coming back to Grado only in the colder months, and the typical boat is the batela, flat-bottomed and rowed. Summer brings a different crowd — families on the beaches, sailors in the marinas and kitesurfers at Grado Pineta — continuing a resort tradition that began with Austrian visitors taking sea-water cures.

The municipality has about 7,500 residents, and covers some 90 square kilometres between the mouth of the Isonzo, the sea and the lagoon, from Porto Buso to Fossalon. Besides the main island, people live year-round on the Isola della Schiusa, joined by two bridges, and on Barbana, while Fossalon on the mainland is farmland reclaimed in the first half of the 20th century.

Once mainly a fishing town, Grado now lives largely from tourism, with hotels, campsites, marinas and the thermal and sea-water treatments that first made it a resort. The town's districts each have their own character: the old town of Gravo vecia inside the Roman walls, Borgo de fora, the Schiusa, the Colmata, Squero, the Città Giardino and Valle Goppion among them. Summer fills the hotels, campsites and beaches; the rest of the year the town is much quieter.

The sea is a constant presence. The curving sea wall along the front was built by the Austrians to protect the old town from storm surges, and the storm of 27 October 2012 knocked down the historic diving board that had stood in front of the main beach since the early 20th century. The lagoon around the island is known for its birdlife, and its eastern end is protected as the Valle Cavanata reserve.

Grado's cooking is fish cooking, based on the catch of the Adriatic and the lagoon. Its best-known dish is boreto alla graisana, Grado-style fish soup, made without tomato and with turbot as the main fish — one of the peculiarities of the wider Friulian kitchen. The old town's restaurants, many of them on the lanes and squares around the basilica, are where most visitors try it.

At aperitivo time, the custom across Friuli is a glass of white wine, often as a spritz, with small snacks such as meatballs, nervetti, salt cod and masanette, small crabs. In Grado that means the bars of the pedestrian old town. The wines on the table are those of the Friulian plain and hills, whites above all.

The lagoon has long fed the town: the fishermen who lived in the casoni for much of the year brought their catch back to Grado, and fish ponds still operate on islands such as Ravaiarina. Away from the waterfront, the food of the Friulian plain — prosciutto di San Daniele, Montasio cheese and polenta — is as common here as anywhere in the region.