Contemporary-art lovers will appreciate the exhibitions at Villa Manin, a villa in Passariano, 30km southwest of Udine. Home to the Venetian noble Manin family from the 1600s until as late as the 1990s (when the last count died heirless), which included the last of Venice’s doges, the vast mansion is surrounded by 19 hectares of manicured gardens. Napoleon Bonaparte humiliated Doge Ludovico Manin by turning the mansion into his headquarters in mid-1797 and, in October, signing the Treaty of Campoformido, under which Venice passed to Habsburg Austria. Alight from a train on the Venice–Udine line at Codroipo and take a taxi (or, if you have the patience, one of the few SAF buses) for the five-minute, 3km, ride.
