Lignano is not only sea, sun, golden sand and fun: it is also culture, thanks mainly to an exceptional visitor: Ernest Hemingway. It must have been hot and sticky when the author of The Old Man and the Sea arrived in Pineta in April 1954, in what was still just a building site imagined by the visionary architect Marcello D’Olivo, and what is now the wonderful and unique spiral-shaped town that everyone knows.

Vintage photos portray the great Hemingway emptying sand from his shoe against a backdrop without anything around. Just the lagoon. Hemingway loved to go hunting wild ducks along the Tagliamento and was fascinated by the reeds, wild pine forests and islets. Who knows if this is how he had imagined the “Italian Florida” which he called what would become the most popular beach in Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Ernest Hemingway came to Friuli on several occasions and wrote of it in a memorable book, A Farewell to Arms, which, in fictional form, described his experience on the Italian front during the First World War. His relationship with these lands strengthened over the years thanks to his friendship with the Kechler family, who often had him as a guest in its Friulian properties, including in the newborn Lignano.

He wrote about it in Across the river and into the trees, the result of a whole Friulian story between Hemingway and the young Adriana Ivancic, the nineteen-year-old cousin of Kechler. It was from this story that Hemingway found the creative impetus needed to write his Friulian novel, which is still very much loved by the public.

Lignano has dedicated him a park to him (where he was invited to build his home) and an International Literary Prize.