The Best Western Park Hotel is just a few steps from Corso Vittorio Emanuele, previously known as Contrada Maggiore, the heart of the historic city centre. Here you will find the most important buildings (including the Palazzo Mantica and the Palazzo Gregoris), built by local nobility between the 14th and 18th centuries with frescos on their façades which have earned them the name of "Urbs Picta" or painted city.
Enjoy a stroll down this elegant street, lined with beautiful porticos, where you can relax and do a spot of shopping among the welcoming stores and cafés.
Then venture into the alleyways, where traditional restaurants have opened serving local delicacies, allowing you to savour the delicious products from the surrounding area accompanied by excellent local wines.
At the end of this street is the famous gothic city hall with its Renaissance clock-tower, built in the sixteenth century by Jacopo da Gemona. The city hall itself was built between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Leaving the city hall on your right, you can walk to the Duomo San Marco, built in the thirteenth century in the Romano-Gothic style. The façade was updated in the nineteenth century but was never completed. The interior consists of a single nave with side chapels.
Saint Mark is the patron saint of Pordenone and is celebrated on 25 April.
If you love nature, you will want to continue to the end of the Corso as far as the Noncello river, around which the city developed and which gave its name to the city of Pordenone: Portus Naonis.
For a relaxing walk we would particularly recommend the Noncello river park or the San Valentino park, the biggest city-centre park in the whole of Friuli (17 hectares).
The oldest bridge over the Noncello, popularly known as the bridge "of Adam and Eve", links Corso Vittorio Emanuele to the sixteenth century Church of the Holy Trinity (Chiesa della Santissima Trinità), which stood outside the city walls. A refined example of a central symmetry building, designed by I. Marone and decorated with frescos by Calderai illustrating episodes from the Old Testament.
Museo Civico d’Arte (Civic Art Museum)
Palazzo Ricchieri Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 51 museo.arte@comune.pordenone.it
www.comune.pordenone.it/citta/musei
Museo Civico di Storia Naturale (Civic Natural History Museum)
Via della Motta, 16
museo.scienze@comune.pordenone.it
www.comune.pordenone.it/citta/musei
Museo Archeologico del Friuli Occidentale - Castello di Torre (Archaeological Museum)
Via Vittorio Veneto, 19
castellotorre.pn@libero.it
www.comune.pordenone.it/citta/musei