Nature & Boat Trips
The Grado Lagoon, the Casoni & Barbana
Grado · Friuli-Venezia Giulia
QUICK INFORMATION
- CATEGORY
- Nature & Boat Trips
- COUNTRY
- Italy
- REGION
- Grado · Friuli-Venezia Giulia
- DURATION
- 2 days
ABOUT THIS ATTRACTION
The lagoon is Grado’s other sea: 90 square kilometres of reeds, mudflats and tidal channels where the fishermen’s casoni — thatched stilt houses, some centuries old — stand over the water, and where the tides twice a day raise and drown the sandbars. Boat trips wind through the channels to the Banco d’Orio, the wild golden-sand barrier island with the clearest water on this coast, and to Barbana, the monastery island at the lagoon’s northern edge where Benedictine monks have kept a sanctuary since 582 — founded, legend says, on the spot where a storm washed an image of the Virgin ashore.
HISTORY & BACKGROUND
The story behind it
The lagoon was Aquileia’s escape route and Grado’s food supply for fifteen centuries: eels, mullet, bass and the famous Grado salt marshes. The casoni are the surviving architecture of that economy — a few are still worked by fishing families, others are protected monuments. Barbana’s sanctuary has been a monastery since the 6th century, and on the first Sunday of July the whole town sails behind the statue of Our Lady of the Angels in the Perdon di Barbana, the most beautiful procession on the Italian Adriatic.
WHAT TO SEE
What to see here
The casoni — the thatched stilt houses of the lagoon fishermen.
Banco d’Orio — the wild sandbar island, reached only by boat.
Barbana island — the Benedictine sanctuary, boat line from the Canal della Schiusa.
The Perdon di Barbana procession on the first Sunday of July.
WHY IT MATTERS
Why it matters
The lagoon is the landscape that created both Grado and Venice — and at Grado you can still experience it wild, by boat, without a single souvenir stall.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Before you go
MAP & LOCATION
The Grado Lagoon, the Casoni & Barbana
The Grado Lagoon, the Casoni & Barbana, Grado, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
45.7065, 13.4245
MORE ATTRACTIONS
More to see in Grado
THINGS TO DO
Things to do nearby
FOOD & DRINK
Where to eat nearby
Ristorante Ship — lagoon fish and the classic Grado casada cake, on the seafront
Osteria al Cason — Friulian cooking and the town’s best eel, in Grado Vecchia
Gelateria da Asio — the institution for gelato by the canal, since 1960
HOTELS & STAYS
Where to stay nearby
Seafront hotels and Habsburg-era villas along the Nazario Sauro promenade
Grado Vecchia B&Bs inside the car-free historic island
Camping: Tenuta Primero (4-star, marina and golf), Marina Julia (family classic) and Belvedere Pineta (quiet, in the pines) — all with cycle paths to town and Aquileia
ITINERARIES
Day-by-day routes
NEARBY DESTINATIONS
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