| Plateau of the Seven Municipalities | |
 | |
| State | Italy |
|---|---|
| Region | Veneto |
| Capital | Asiago |
| Surface | 878,3 |
| Inhabitants | 21.247 (2011 census) |
| «The Switzerland of the Veneto opens up to you at the last step, and is a world unto itself, with its labyrinth of pastures far from the world, the ancient community laws, the Seven Municipalities federated for seven centuries and left free by the Greater Venice. " |
| (Paolo Rumiz, Italian journalist and writer) |
Plateau of the Seven Municipalities (Hoaga Ebene vun Siiben Kameûn or Hòoge Vüüronge dar Siban Komàüne in Cimbrian language), also known as Asiago plateau, is a region belonging to Territory of Vicenza.
To know
Geographical notes
The Asiago plateau is a vast plateau located in the Vicenza Alps, in the border area between the regions Veneto is Trentino Alto AdigeBetween the rivers Astico is Brenta, the massif has an extension, relative to the administrative area of the Seven Municipalities, of 473.5 km², but the geographical extension of the mountain group as a whole reaches 878.3 km². Its altitude is between 87 m and 2341 m.
When to go
The Plateau is an important summer and winter tourist area. Nordic skiing is particularly popular thanks to a very extensive network of ski slopes (over 500 km) which make it the national home of this discipline.
Background
The area is rich in fossils, the first skeleton found in Italy of a plesiosaur was discovered in Kaberlaba.
A first hypothesis traces the origin of the German-speaking population of the Altopiano dei Sette Comuni to the Cimbri people, coming from the territory of Jutland (in Denmark) who tried to invade Italy but was defeated by the Roman army under the leadership of Gaius Mario. According to these hypotheses, supported in particular by the local toponymy and by the religious beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of the Plateau, part of this belligerent population would have retreated to the mountains of the Plateau, originating the lineage of the modern Cimbri dei Sette Comuni. which is the most shared by the historical-scientific community and which has been affirming itself in the late nineteenth century, instead sees the origin of the Cimbri due to the descent from southern Germany, around the year 1000, of groups of families mostly from 'Bavarian area.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century the local population began to organize themselves militarily, finding the support of Ezzelino da Romano (who owned some fiefdoms on the spot), to whom they provided their own troops. At the beginning of the 14th century, after the fall of the Ezzelini, the Seven Municipalities united in Federation, in order to govern themselves with the greatest possible autonomy and to defend the territory. In 1310 the Respectable Regency of the Seven Municipalities was founded, the first Federation in the world comparable to a modern federal state. This Federation definitively ceases to exist on 29 June 1807 due to Napoleon Bonaparte's Italian Campaign.
| “On the Plateau, including the heavy trench bombards, there were no fewer than a thousand guns. An immense drumming, between roars that seemed to come out from the belly of the earth, upset the ground. The earth itself trembled under our feet. That wasn't artillery fire. It was hell that broke loose. Trumpets of earth, stones and fragments of bodies rose, very high, and fell far away. The whole ground shook beneath our feet. An earthquake shook the mountain. " |
| (Emilio Lussu - A year on the plateau) |
The first cannon shot by the Italian of the First World War, which sanctioned the entry into the war by the royal army, was fired by the Fort Verena, at 4 am on May 24, 1915.
The entire Plateau, which once stood on the border between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, was thus directly affected by the events of the Great War: entire villages such as the city of Asiago were completely razed to the ground. In 1916, during the Spring Offensive (Strafexpedition in German), in fact, the Austro-Hungarian army suddenly broke through on the Trentino front forcing the Italian army to hastily evacuate the civilian population from inhabited centers. There Strafexpedition it was the largest mountain battle ever fought by man.
Significant is the poem by Attilio Frescura which tells the destruction of the city of Asiago in a significant and highly symbolic way.
| "May 18, 1916: Asiago is on fire |
| (Attilio Frescura - Diary of an ambush) |
During the 4 years of war, it is estimated that no less than 1.5 million bombs were dropped on the Plateau by the various armies.
There are numerous fortifications in the area, as well as other remains witnessing the events of the First World War (trenches, tunnels, cableways, barracks, etc.) which here engaged soldiers from every corner of Europe. Epic battles went down in history for the crueness of the battles, such as the battles of Ortigara, the Battle of the Altipiani, the Battle of the Tre Monti and the Battle of the solstice.
Among the various fighters engaged in the area, numerous writers including Carlo Emilio Gadda, Paolo Monelli, Emilio Lussu and Nobel Prize for literature such as Ernest Hemingway and Rudyard Kipling, as well as one of the most famous English authors, Vera Brittain.
Ernest Hemingway, then eighteen, had volunteered with the United States Red Cross and was assigned to Section IV of the American International Red Cross, at the Cazzola Wool Mill in Schio. Wounded by shrapnel from a bomb and a machine gun bullet, he will then be decorated with the silver medal for having worked, even after being hit, in rescuing other wounded soldiers. From this personal experience and from the subsequent hospitalization in a Milanese hospital, he will draw his famous novel "Addio alle Armi".
After this experience, in Paris, in 1922, he wrote the poem Arsiero, Asiago where Monte Corno di Lusiana, place where one of the five cemeteries of the Commonwealth present on the Plateau.
| (EN) "Arsiero, Asiago, | (IT) "Arsiero, Asiago, |
| (Ernest Hemingway) | |
Spoken languages
The plateau is inhabited by the ethnic minority of the gods cimbri, which once stood out, among other things, because they spoke a particular idiom of Germanic origin, the language cimbra. This speech is now used only by a few inhabitants of Roana and, in particular, of the fraction Mezzaselva. Consistent traces of the Cimbrian however they exist in the colloquial language and in the toponymy of the whole area.
Territories and tourist destinations
Plateau of the Seven Municipalities: full screen map.How to get
By plane
- 1 Asiago airport. The Asiago plateau has always been considered an optimal place for gliding, so much so that the first non-motorized flights in Italy took place right above the skies of Asiago: in 1924 the 1st national record of duration by airplane was beaten without engine. During the Second World War the landing strip was destroyed by the Nazi-Fascist units to avoid the landing of allied planes that supplied the local resistance, rather rooted in the Vicenza plateau. Today there is no regular connection with other Italian and international airports from the airport, and the runways are mostly used for gliding.
By car
The Altopiano dei Sette Comuni is connected to the Vicenza plain through the state road of the cost (with Thiene), the provincial of the Brotherhood (with Bassano del Grappa) and the Rameston Provincial (with Marostica); to Trento it is always connected with the state road 349 of the Cost; then there are numerous other minor roads that allow the connection both from Val d'Astico than from the Canale di Brenta.
By bus
It is also possible to reach the plateau by bus thanks to the following lines of the FTV:
23. Thiene - Italian crossroads - Asiago - Gallium
26. Castelletto di Rotzo - Italian crossroads - Asiago - Gallium
41. Asiago - Conical - Marostica - Bassano del Grappa
100. (Vicenza) - Asiago - Monterovere - Lavarone - Luserna
Timetables are available on FTV site.
How to get around
What see
The naturalistic merits of the plateau are remarkable, which in the northern part can count in one wilderness quite extensive. Of particular importance is the presence of two peat bogs known as "Palù di San Lorenzo" and "Palù di Sotto", in the plain of Marcesina where, among the rare and endemic species, carnivorous plants (such as Drosera rotundifolia) and the Arctic wreck Andromeda polifolia, the latter discovered for the first time just a Marcesina in 1703.
On the plateau there are over 100 mountain pastures which, by extension of their pastures and by number, constitute the most important mountain pasture system in the entire Alpine arc.
| "The staircase that takes you up there, on the Asiago plateau, is as long as purgatory, dark as a storm. Four thousand four hundred and forty-four steps, steep from beasts, tiring already to name them. They start from Val Brenta, under grim peaks, at the point where the valley - for those coming from Bassano - seems to split in two, at the height of a village called Valstagna, with its wall of old houses at the edge of the embankment. The slope takes the left-hand crack and burns 810 meters in altitude in a flash. It's called "Calà del Sasso", and it's one of the most fantastic works in the Alps. " |
| (Paolo Rumiz) |
Of considerable importance is the Calà del Sasso, the longest staircase inItaly as well as the longest staircase in the world open to the public. This path, made up of 4444 steps, connects the municipality of Valstagna, in the Canale di Brenta, in the hamlet of Sasso di Asiago. The path is still largely flanked by a gutter, made, like the steps themselves, in limestone: this gutter was once used to transport the timber of the Plateau downstream. Once in Valstagna, in fact, the Calà ends near the Brenta river, where the trunks floated up to Venice where they were used in the Arsenal for the construction of boats.
The Calà del Sasso can be traveled all year round (although it is not recommended to travel in the winter months due to the presence of snow and unfavorable weather conditions) and the route is marked with signpost number 778. The route starts from the local car park. Lebo di Valstagna (221 m) and ends at the Church of Sasso di Asiago (965 m). La Calà is about 7 km long, the travel time is about 2 hours and the difference in height is 744 m.
According to a local belief, it is said in Valbrenta that in 1638, Loretta and Nicolò, inhabitants of Sasso di Asiago and engaged in the odor of marriage, are struck by misfortune: Loretta, expecting a child, falls seriously ill and her lover, determined to save her, part decided at a time of Padua looking for a miracle ointment. Calà del Sasso descends and once in Valstagna he hires a horse. While traveling at a great pace, time passes quickly and with the arrival of the night Nicolò has not yet returned.
The inhabitants of the Sasso di Asiago then decide to go down with torches to meet the young man. With astonishment they see other lights rising along the Calà: it is Nicolò escorted by the men of Valstagna. The story has a happy ending with the ointment that heals Loretta and the two arrears can thus get married, with the participation of all the inhabitants of Sasso and Valstagna. Hence the popular belief that if two engaged couples walk along the Calà hand in hand they will love each other forever.
To revive this message of love on the second Sunday of August every year there is a commemorative torchlight procession that takes several hundred people from Valstagna to Sasso di Asiago along the Calà, where they are greeted by music and banquets.
Great war
Numerous battles of the First World War were fought on the Asiago plateau which left an indelible mark on the whole territory.
The military structures located on the Asiago plateau are works born either at the end of the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the following one, that is to say at the outbreak of the First World War and built by the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies since in that period of the territory of the Seven Municipalities was located along the state border.
There are a series of defensive works, batteries and fortresses, all of which were almost destroyed by bombing, many of them were however subjected to a redevelopment and restoration plan in view of the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.
However, we should not forget all those works consisting of trenches, tunnels, walkways, observatories, positions in caves, underground tunnels, built by the two armies and largely open to visitors, which transformed the mountains of the Plateau into real fortresses.
Road arteries are also important, military roads built in a very short time to allow soldiers and vehicles to easily reach the front. Many of these roads constitute the viability of the Plateau (the Strada della Fratellanza is an example), others, located in more inaccessible areas, have become important historical-cultural routes as well as excellent itineraries for those who practice mountain biking in the summer. or Nordic skiing in winter.
Among the perfectly preserved military roads, there are for example the arteries that constituted the main Austro-Hungarian road network in the north-western sector:
- Erzherzog Eugen Straße
- Kaiser Karl Straße
- Zoviellostraße
- Mecenseffystraße
- Conradstraße
- Kronprinz Otto Straße
After the war, numerous cemeteries and ossuaries were also built, the main ones being:
- 1 Shrine of the Leiten (military shrine of Asiago). A large ossuary monument that collects the remains of the fallen who were initially buried in the 41 war cemeteries of the Altopiano dei Sette Comuni built during the Fascist period, in 1932.
- Five Commonwealth cemeteries.
Events and parties
What to do
On the plateau, winter sports are practiced in particular: hockey and ice skating thanks to the Asiago and of Roana; ski jumping possible with the two ski jumps of Gallium; Alpine skiing with 40 facilities including the stations of Monte Verena, Melette and other locations and above all Nordic skiing (7 cross-country centers), thanks to the presence of a very dense road network (over 500 km) - deriving mainly from works military - which in winter turns into ski slopes, while in summer it offers mountain bike enthusiasts the opportunity to travel many kilometers of dirt road.
In the summer, the Melette ski resorts are transformed into a bike park with a special track designed for downhill practitioners. At the Busa Fonda di Gallio facility there is also a track of the Forestry Sports Center which hosts speed skating competitions on ice, ice speedway, ice rallies and shooting. The Olympic track of Busa Fonda is the only natural track in Italy.
In this area you can then practice numerous extreme sports such as gliding (thanks to the presence of the Asiago airport), paragliding and hang gliding with the take-off areas located in the Municipality of Conco. It is also possible to practice canyoning and rafting in the nearby Brenta river and also bungee jumping with jumps from the bridges of Roana and Val Gadena. In Asiago there is also an 18-hole golf course (which will soon have 27 holes following the expansion of the course designed by the American architect Robert Trent Jones). Nordic walking is also very popular.
Shopping
How to have fun
Where to eat
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Typical products
The most important food products in the area are dairy products. The cheese Asiago it is a product D.O.P. known worldwide, whose production is typical of the plateau and takes place in numerous dairies present, as well as in the characteristic mountain huts. In the more than 100 malghe present, the typical malga cheese is also produced, a Slow Food presidium concerns an aged form. Other typical dairy products are the malga butter, the tosela and other typical cheeses, such as kummel (caraway flavored cheese), the gallium (smoked cheese), caciotte and cream of asiago (melted cheese).
Other typical products are it Asiago speck, the celery from Rubbio, the Rotzo potato, the production of spirits (such as kranebet, the Amaro Asiago, the Amaro Cimbro and the Kumetto), honey and jams (Rigoni di Asiago).
Where stay
Safety
How to keep in touch
Around
Other projects
Wikipedia contains an entry concerning Plateau of the Seven Municipalities
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