Chiesa di San Lorenzo Martire

Chiesa di San Lorenzo Martire stands on a slope a little apart from the houses of Sauris di Sopra, high in the Val Lumiei in Carnia. There's been a church here since at least 1328. The building you see today was rebuilt later, in the German Gothic style that came over the mountains with the settlers, and it still has a larch shingle roof and a bell tower finishing in a tall stone spire. Since it sits apart from the village this means you can easily capture the church as a single building against the mountains, without any neighbouring roof lines to crop around. There is lots of space around the church so you can walk up past it and shoot back down with the valley behind, or drop below and pair it with an open sky so the spire stands clear. Snow also suits the entire scene here, giving your compositions an entirely different feel. The dark shingle and grey stone really pop against the soft white ground. Inside, there's a winged altarpiece carved by the Tyrolean sculptor Michael Parth in 1551. It's dim in there, so make sure to bring a tripod in your kit. Getting inside isn't guaranteed, you can ask at the tourist office in the village to see if there is someone who can open it up for you. It's about eighty kilometres from Udine with a mountain road for the last section, which makes the drive part of the adventure. (Sauris di Sopra, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy)