Arta Terme

In the valley of the But, cut through by the stream of the same name as it descends from the Carnic Alps toward the Tagliamento, Arta Terme sits at over four hundred metres of altitude, in that part of the province of Udine that the Friulians call Carnia. The village does not have the visibility of the great alpine resorts, nor does it seek it. Its rhythm is set by water — that of the Pudia spring, sulphate-calcium-sulphurous, known already in Roman times and used today in the thermal establishments for drinking cures, baths, mud treatments and inhalations. It is a water that carries a long history with it, one that shaped the vocation of the place before the place even had a modern name.

The municipal territory is made up of distinct hamlets, each with its own architectural and religious identity. In Càbia, the church of San Giorgio holds the first canvas signed by Nicola Grassi, dated 1710 — a painting of real significance for the history of eighteenth-century Friulian art. In Borgo Chiusini, the church of Santo Spirito dates back to the fourteenth century: the small portico, the hanging bell tower and the fifteenth-century interior frescoes form an ensemble that the simplicity of the building makes all the more legible. In Piano d'Arta the parish church has an octagonal plan, eighteenth-century frescoes and a wooden baptismal font from 1649; the church of San Nicolò degli Àlzeri, with its portico and bell gable, has thirteenth-century origins. These are buildings that do not announce themselves, that one comes across along minor roads through the woods.

On the natural side, the landscape offers routes that lead straight into the geology of the mountain. From Piano d'Arta, a mule track and a path through firs and beeches lead in about two hours to the Lander towers, rock formations produced by the erosion of dolomite — vertical structures that rise from the vegetation with a geometry owing nothing to human intervention. The Troi di S. Pieri, a route starting from Arta Terme itself, climbs instead through greenery up to the pieve (parish church) of San Pietro di Carnia, following a path that for centuries has accompanied the movements of the mountain communities.

Arta Terme belongs to that category of places where regeneration is not a marketing concept but a geographical condition. Carnia imposes distances, silences, an air that changes quality with altitude. The waters of the Pudia spring, the churches scattered through the hamlets, the paths climbing toward the rock formations: everything converges on an idea of time measured differently. This is not a place to be consumed in a day, nor one that exhausts itself in a season.