Oderzo (Veneto, Italy): 12 places, stories and people you have to know before visiting Oderzo
12 PLACES, THINGS AND ARTISTS YOU HAVE TO KNOW BEFORE VISITING ODERZO
Talking about the places close to us is always a complicated business, but it is fascinating when you discover that nearby towns have interesting stories to tell about places, things and artisits who made the town great. It has actually happened to me with Oderzo, a small town in the Italian Veneto region,, not far from Venice (59 km) and not far from Treviso (about 28 km).
Sharing with you the places in Oderzo and its most special people whom you should know when visiting Oderzo: seeing the places is interesting but what would be a town without its artists and people? So let's discover Oderzo together!
The ancient Roman city of Oderzo sits on the Venetian plain about an hour north of Venice. Not only does Oderzo make the base to explore the Veneto region area around Treviso, but also there’s a lot to do in the town itself.
With premiere views on the Monticano river, long walks in nature, its ancient Roman and pre-Roman history, and of course, the traditional local sweet that you can find only here called "Stracchino" (actually available around Easter), Oderzo offers all the ingredients for a great vacation in north eastern Italy.
ODERZO HISTORY: DID YOU KNOW THAT ASTERIX AND OBELIX CAME FROM ODERZO?
Did you know that Asterix and Obelix were born in Oderzo?
Well, their illustrator and co-creator Albert Uderzo who was actually French was the son of Silvio Uderzo who migrated from this area of the Veneto region to France after the First World War. Some say that his father's surname was changed after the name of his town!
I am not sure whether this story is true or not, however it is funny because the two comic characters of Asterix and Obelix who were Gaulish warriors used to say "They are crazy, these Romans": in fact the Gauls were bitter enemies of the Romans, and Oderzo flourished and reached its peak just in Roman times!
However, the city history is much older and dates back to the Paleoveneti era, the ancient populations who lived in the region, and since that time the town was at the centre of business; the name Oderzo in the ancient language meant "the market".
Oderzo developed in Roman times as it was in a strategic position, close to the sea, in an area of passage towards northern Europe. Moreover, it was surroounded by the plain so it was easy to build roads here: that s why the Postumia road was built in 148 BC connecting Genoa with another important Roman town, Aquileia.
The Postumia road made Oderzo easy to reach and allowed its expansion until it became a huge municipality by concession of Julius Caesar and part of the Roman Empire.
Oderzo was a huge city under Roman dominion: it went from the foothills of Vittorio Veneto (30 km northernwards) to the Adriatic sea (about 40 km). However in 200 AD it was invaded by the barbarians who destroyed it and it just declined.
What is really important is the testimony and heritage of the first centuries after Christ that can still be found in the domus and ancient Roman fora rediscovered in underground Oderzo.
In Medieval times Oderzo flourished again to reach its top in the Renaissance and in the Venetian period.
12 PLACES, THINGS AND PEOPLE YOU HAVE TO KNOW BEFORE VISITING ODERZO, VENETO, ITALY
1. ALBERTO MARTINI'S SCARY ART GALLERY AND ENO BELLIS' ROMAN ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEUM IN PALAZZO FOSCOLO
The first place I want to tell you about is Palazzo Foscolo (Via Garibaldi 63), a beautiful Venetian palace in Oderzo which, before the Foscolo's, was inhabited by one of the historical noble families of Venice, the Contarini's.
The Palace was built at the end of the sixteenth century and originally had a very rich garden with wonderful statues all around the fishpond. The palace ihuge like many of the Venetian palaces in the hinterland, many of which are painted also in Oderzo. In fact, Oderzo is called Urbs Picta or the painted city.
The Palazzo Foscolo today is a double museum: the picture gallery named after the artist and engraver Alberto Martini and the town archaeological museum named after the historian Eno Bellis. Both Martini and Bellis were two amazing character.
On the one hand Alberto Martini was a unique painter with an incredible genius, inspiration and engraving technique: he was the precursor of the surrealists and the author of incredible (and macabre) works which you can see in Palazzo Foscolo.
Just to name just one thing: he invented the marine theater, the Tetiteatro, completely soaked in a swimming pool with fantastic characters like the one who looks like Angelina Jolie in Maleficient but in fact she is the goddess Thetis!
On the other, Eno Bellis, was one of the pioneers of archeological research and historical documentation of ancient Oderzo who promoted many archaeological excavations in town, thanks to whom you can see today's the archaeological museum.
2. LEARN THE STORY OF THE POETRESS VITTORIA AGANOOR
When you leave Palazzo Foscolo, in front of you, you will find the name of the street, Via Vittoria Aganoor, and next to it another wonderful Venetian palace.
Who was Vittoria Aganoor?
She was one of the few poetresses of Armenian origin, born in the area, actually in Padua, but who was particularly attached to Oderzo and to the Veneto region. As a matter of fact Vittoria Aganoor was the figure a learned woman of letters who for a long period lived in a villa in the village of Basalghelle, near Oderzo, that she called "her hermitage".
She was so good at writing that aroused general admiration with her songbook Eternal Legend (1900), defined by Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce as "the most beautiful songbook that has ever been composed by an Italian woman ".
She married to a famous politician and she moved to Rome; unfortunately she died for complications after undergoing an operation probably linked to the onset of cancer in 1910.
The pain caused by her disappearance led her husband to kill himself that same day.
3. A SUNDIAL IN ODERZO? WALK ALONG VENETIAN PALAZZO MOLETTI PORCIA
If you take the alley opposite Palazzo Foscolo you will pass by the wall of the Moletti Porcia Palace which houses a beautiful nineteenth-century sundial. This wonderful frescoed sixteenth-century palace also had a beautiful garden inside.
4. THE FIRST ROMAN HERO OF ODERZO, CAIO VOLTEIO CAPITONE
This is quite a bloody piece of history of Oderzo.
In July 49 BC Julius Caesar was fighting the war against Pompey. Caesar's generals clashed with Pompey's generals. Pompey's generals seemed to win. Valiant men went to support Caesar's forces. Among these there was a group of soldiers including a certain Caio Volteio Capitone originally from Oderzo.
The military tribune Gaius Volteio Capitone preferred to die with a thousands volunteers from Oderzo, rather than surrender to the fleet of Pompey.
What had Capitone done? He had asked his men to kill him not to fall in Caesar's troops hands, and the same did all his men: they all killed themselves to avoid being caught and lose their dignity.
After the heroic Capitone's self-sacrifice and death, in 49 A.D. Caesar decreed for the inhabitants of Oderzo the status of Roman citizens, the exemption of military service for 20 years and the creation of three hundred new centuries.
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| Fonte Imagine Locusglobus - Gino Borsato:Sacrifice of Oderzo soldiers between the islands of Cres and Krk. |
5. ARCHITECT TONI FOLLINA: THE NEW GLASS PYRAMIDS AND THE OLD ROMAN TRACHYTE
In the 1980s, when Oderzo began to be given a new urban layout, and during the major urban redesign excavation works, many remains of various eras came to light. And then it was necessary to decide what to do with these ancient Roman remains.
When the architect Toni Follina from Treviso was called to renovate Oderzo, he decided to show what was archaeological Oderzo through the glass pyramids that allow you to see the underground remains and mosaics. Although small in size, they vaguely recall the famous pyramid of the Louvre in Paris.
Follina redeveloped the main square of Oderzo using ancient materials such as trachyte which was stone much used in Roman times; in fact, the findings of trachyte aqueducts are very common in ancient Roman times.
Also in Roman times, the trachyte stone was used in the construction of bridges and road pavings. In the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance,the trachyte was widely used in various works and architectural elements and above all in the paving of streets and squares of Venetian cities, primarily Venice, but also of other cities outside the region, such as Mantua, Ferrara, and Udine.
The floor of the main square in Oderzo made of trachyte has a huge sundial that characterises the square: modernity flanked by antiquity is typicical of Oderzo where you can see the Roman forum under a supermodern building, or a café next to the remains of a Roman villa.
6. STROLL ALONG THE MONTICANO RIVER TO RETRACE THE STEPS OF THE TRAGIC STORY OF THE TWO LOVERS
If you cross Piazza Castello in Oderzo, head towards the Monticano river which passes through the city. The river is at the heart of a tragic love story lived by two young people in 1860 when Veneto was still under Austro-Hungarian rule.
At that time in Oderzo a very beautiful young woman lived: she was the daughter of the pharmacist, Maria Vincenti, and opposite a young cadet of the Austro-Hungarian army lived. He was an Hungarian national in origin. When they met, they fell in love. It was an impossible love as he was a soldier in the occupying army.
One night, on September 20, 1860, the two young lovers met along the Monticano river, they made love and then killed each other in the river so that their love would last forever, also because the honor code of the time would never have allowed it.
An almost completely ignored fact is that the suicide of these lovers was also a source of inspiration for the young Giovanni Verga in his "Venetian" novel "On the lagoons", set right between Venice and Oderzo.
7. POMPONIO AMALTEO AND THE PAINTED FACADES
The square of Oderzo has always been a meeting place, but it becomes influential especially in the Medieval period because around the piazza the fortified city developed the access gates, though they gates no longer exist today, except one: the Torresin tower, the huge tower.
The Cathedral overlooking the square has a fourteenth-century Romanesque shape. There have been numerous interventions on the facade and it contains many famous works by one of the most famous families of Oderzo, the Amalteos. The painter Pomponio Amalteo was a painter from Motta di Livenza, close to Oderzo, son-in-law of another famous painter, Pordenone.
Amalteo is said to have painted the frescoes on Palazzo Ottoboni, right in front of the Dome. The frescoes of the Palace show a lot of puttis and women still well preserved. Instead of the pavement on the square, a canal ran through the piazza but was buried.
In front of us you can see the Torresin, the city tower that was the ancient Trevisana gate, through which the Callalta road, the part of the Postumia road ran from Treviso and went through the Medieval fortified Oderzo.
Under the dominion of the Serenissima Republic of Venice, the Torresin tower was the residence of the Venetian civil authority, and in fact if you cross the Torresin gate, you enter the Venetian Oderzo with most of the painted houses which were owned by merchants, philisophers or artists coming from rich families.
8. BERNARDINO DA FELTRE: THE FRIAR WHO WAS HATED BY VENICE
If you cross the Torresin tower and the arch, you will arrive in the so-called "area of the Venetian palaces. In fact, looking up at the names of the streets on the buildings, they are all named after noble families who came from Venice or sometimes outside Venice, from northern Italy, and were families of merchants who had become rich with trades with Venice.
Other times these nobles were doctors, philosophers or writers, such as the members of the Tomitano family who had as descendant Martino Tomitano, also called Fra Bernardino da Tomitano, a friar from the town of Feltre, which is a town to the north of Oderzo, who lived in the fifteenth century.
He became a well-known preacher, critical of the bad customs and usury that at the time was widespread in Venice, especially amongst the Jews.
Bernardino da Feltre did a great deal in trying to free the poor people from the usury debt, which was condemned by the church, but which was practiced on a large scale. For this purpose he founded various Monti di Pietà (pawnshop) in many Italian cities towards the end of the 1400s.
He was greatly opposed by Venice, which banned him from the Serenissima Republic because Venice needed continuous loans of money and those who lent them were mainly Jews.
Rejected from Venice, Bernardino da Feltre died in Pavia due to consumption and is buried in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine.
The power of the Tomitano family can be clearly seen from their beautiful building in the center of Oderzo and also from the history of his descendants including Fra Bernardino da Feltre, the friar who was hated by Venice.
9. CIRO CRISTOFOLETTI: A REBEL ARTIST WHO GOT DRUNK AT D'ANNUNZIO'S FUNERAL
Oderzo was the birthplace of a unique artist, Ciro Cristofoletti who with his brother, Eugenio Cristofoletti, lived in one of the houses right in the area of Oderzo where the Venetian palaces stand.
He changed a thousand jobs before becoming an artist: he had been employed in a bank, editor, border guard and finally director of the Canova bookshop in Treviso from 1946 to 1969.
Friend of poets like Comisso and writers like D'Annunzio, he has been remembered because at the funeral of the latter at the Vittoriale, he got drunk and was thrown out. He was also a multi faceted actor and appeared in the film Death in Venice by Luchino Visconti.
10. THE BAKER "PASTICCERIA FORNER" AND THE LOCAL "STRACCHINO" SWEET
They say that inside Palazzo Foscolo great parties were held amongst nobles and apparently they were served a special dessert, the "stracchino" sweet made in Oderzo (still today) only in the Lenten period.
The place where the pastry was made in origin is the baker's "Pasticceria Forner" in Oderzo.
The typical dessert is prepared with un-whipped cream or in dialect "straca" (tired in the Venetian dialect) from which come the name "stracchino". This dessert is not produced anywhere else in Italy and was designed exclusively for the period of Lent.
Keep this in mind when you visit Oderzo!
11. THE BIGGEST PALACE IN ODERZO: PALAZZO DIEDO
You know in Venice the huge Palazzo Grassi or Cà Rezzonico?
They were the masterpieces of the Venetian architect Giorgio Massari. Many rich families called the architect to have their palaces built and among the most powerful Venetian families also present in Oderzo we include the Diedos.
In fact the huge building that today houses the Municipality was the Diedo Palace and was built in 1750 in the neoclassical style with marvelous mighty columns.
It looks today like a huge manor house but originally it had two side barchessse (no longer existing), three hectares of park with a well and a pond! Its garden was one of the largest in the province of Treviso!
This palace was definitelya celebration of the rich and famous people of Oderzo!
12. ARTURO BENVENUTI, THE ARTIST WHO TRAVELED EUROPE IN CAMPER VAN TO COLLECT THE WORKS OF THE INMATES OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Last year at the age 93, the artist from Oderzo, Arturo Benvenuti died: this man had travelled for many years with his camper van all over Europe to collect the drawings of the inmates of the concentration camps.
His tireless work of collecting the works and memories of so many inmates was published in a book, reporting and describing the immense drama these people had experienced.
The title of the book is K.Z., an acronym that derives from Yiddish and which means "Konzentration Zender" - concentration camp. Specifically, K.Z. refers to Katzetnik or “prisoner of the concentration camp”, with reference to the detainee rather than the place or form of detention: Katzetnik associated with the number was the usual way in which prisoners in the camps were called.
The book came out with a preface by Italian writer Primo Levi whom in the foreword wrote: the images are not an equivalent or a surrogate: they substitute the word with the advantage that they say what the word cannot say.
Benvenuti, the writer and artist from Oderzo, was born in 1923 and was the founder and first director of the art gallery Alberto Martini in Oderzo (1970).
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