Friuli (Italian: [friˈuːli]; Friulian: Friûl [fɾiˈuːl] ⓘ; Venetian: Friul or Friułi; Slovene: Furlanija; Austrian German: Friaul) is a historical region of northeast Italy.

It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, i.e. the administrative provinces of Udine, Pordenone, and Gorizia, excluding Trieste.

During the course of the 4th century BC Friuli was also settled by the Carni (in ancient Greek Καρνίοι), a tribe of unknown ethnicity which may have spoken a Celtic, a Venetic or a Rhaetic language, and which introduced advanced techniques of working iron and silver.

In the final decades of the 3rd century, Aquileia became the center of one of the most prestigious bishoprics of the empire, competing in Italy with Milan and, subsequently, Ravenna, for second place to Rome.

The capital of the duchy was established at Forum Iulii (Cividale del Friuli), which became the most important city of the area and for where it derived its name.

Among the duchies of the North, which were closely aligned with the crown (unlike Spoleto and Benevento to the South), it was the most powerful, probably due to its marcher status.

The historian Paul the Deacon was born in Friuli (730/5), he went on to write the Historia Langobardorum and taught Latin grammar at Charlemagne's court.

On 3 April 1077, the Emperor Henry IV granted the county of Friuli, with ducal status, to Sigaerd, Patriarch of Aquileia.

Friuli maintained some form of autonomy, by keeping its own Parliament ruling on the old territory of the Patriarchate, an autonomy not granted to the other cities and provinces submitted to Venice (even Venetian ones); on the other side, it maintained also its feudal nobility, which was able to keep their feudal rights over the land and its inhabitants for some time.

These wars led to poverty and instability of the rural population, with the inability to cultivate the land crossed by fighting armies and with the forced surrender of all livestock to feed traveling troops.

The harvesting of timber needed to build Venetian ships caused complete deforestation of the Bassa Friulana and central Friuli.

[citation needed] These properties in turn would be sold by Venice during the 17th century to raise cash to alleviate its poor financial condition.

Beginning in the 1630s, the Venetian Republic entered a relative decline, due to the enlarging horizon of European markets (reaching now from Asia to Africa to the Americas).

Venice's richest families often directed financial resources into unproductive investments (specifically real estate), while there was a loss of competitiveness in industries and services.

According to some historians, the political populism practiced by Venice looked for ways to limit the most oppressive and anachronistic effects of feudalism.

[citation needed] These policies were practiced by the Venetian government to ensure the support of the urban and rural population as a counterbalance to the independent tendencies and power of local oligarchies and aristocrats.

An important jacquerie, known as Joibe Grasse 1511 (Fat Thursday 1511), was started in Udine on February 27 by starving Udinesi citizens.

This insurrection was one of the largest in Renaissance Italy and it lasted from 27 February until 1 March, when it ended as Venice dispatched around one hundred cavalry to put down the rebellion.

With the 1516 Noyon pacts the boundary between the Venetian Republic and the County of Gorizia and Gradisca, now in the hands of the House of Habsburg, were redefined.

Venice lost the upper Isonzo valley (that is the Gastaldia of Tolmino with Plezzo and Idria), but it kept Monfalcone, Marano and a series of shed feudal islands in the Western Friuli stayed with the Archduke of Austria (until 1543).

In 1815, the Congress of Vienna confirmed the union of Veneto, which Central-West Friuli was part of, with Lombardy (previously divided between Austrian Empire and Venetian Republic), to constitute the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia.

Portogruaro was for long time part of Friuli, even under Venetian Republic, and Friulian language was spoken in the area.

The Ethnographic map of Karl von Czoernig-Czernhausen, issued by the k. u. k. Administration of Statistics in 1855, recorded a total of 401,357 Friulians living in the Austrian Empire.

By contrast, in 1945, the traditionalist association Patrie tal Friul was founded by Tiziano Tessitori with a view to establishing an autonomous Friuli within Italy.

In January 1947, the poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini went on to found the party Movimiento Popolari Friulano, with the same purpose of devolution.

Venetian and its dialects are usually spoken (for historical reasons) on the western border regions (i.e. Pordenone), sparingly in a few internal towns (i.e. Gorizia, etc.

In the southeastern part of Friuli, a Venetian transitional dialect is spoken, called Bisiaco, that has influences of both Slovene and Friulian.

In the Resia valley, between Venetian Slovenia and the Val Canale, most of the inhabitants still speak an archaic dialect of Slovene, known as Resian.

Only Friulian, Slovenian and German are allowed to be local secondary official languages in their historic areas, but not their related dialects.