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Coming soon: The Festival of the Fisciot

The ancient festival of Our Lady of Sorrows is one of the most anticipated events in Belluno. The historical center fills with colorful stands, aromatic flowers and crowds of people who greet one another as they celebrate the arrival of spring. 

Everything is ready for the long-awaited Festival of the Fisciot, the holy celebration and gathering of the community with which the city of Belluno greets the flower season.

The celebration has ancient origins: since 1716, the statue of Madonna dei Sette dolori (Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows), used by the Bellunese citizenry to commemorate the end of a terrible epidemic of pestilence, has been carried in a procession across the historical center, two Sundays before Easter Sunday. And this year the tradition lives on: Sunday March 13th is the annual Festival of the Fisciot!

But do you know why it is called this? It gets its name from the “fischietti di richiamo” (whistles of excitement), which once upon a time were among the items most sold by local artisans at their stands on the streets of the city center as part of this Sunday festival.

The details: the events of the 2016 Festival of the Fisciot

Spread out across the entire city center, including Via Dante and Via Cavour, there will be more than 200 vendors with stands selling candies, toys, glassware, ceramics, wood and fabric, and even jewelry, ornaments, paintings, discs, cassette tapes, wicker products, copper, glasses, aromatic essences,  honey, leather goods, umbrellas, scarves, balloons and of course, regional food and drink.

Furthermore, this year in Piazza Piloni will be host to the exhibit market of fine food and tasting, while Piazza dei Martiri will be host to the market of local agricultural products, managed by Unione Montana Bellunese.

In Piazza Duomo, once again there will be the market “Fiori in Città: la Città sboccia” (Flowers in the City: the City blooms), as well as the antiques market “Cose di vecchie case” (Objects from old houses) that with its selected vendors is one of the most anticipated and popular events, before its return for the summer season. Piazzale Marconi will be the setting for a stand selling seasonal fruits.

Beginning at 10:45am in Piazza Duomo, at the corner of the former courthouse, the marching band “Citta di Belluno” (City of Belluno) will perform. The traditional procession will occur in the same place at 4:00pm.

Free shuttle service

To help with transportation, the city has instituted its usual free shuttle service that will run from 9:30am to 7:30pm for the entire day of Sunday March 13th. Here are the details:

For the north-east lines (from Baldenich/Cavarzano to the station) and south-west (from via Col da Ren to piazzale Marconi), shuttles will stop every 10 minutes.

For the other lines:

  • Line 1 (from Castion to piazzale Marconi), every 30 minutes
  • Line 2 (from Giazzoi/Tisoi to piazzale della stazione), every 50 minutes, leaving from Giazzoi at 9:55am – 10:45 – 11:35 – 12:25pm – 1:15pm – 2:05 – 2:55 – 3:45 – 4:35 – 5:25 – 6:15 – 7:05 – 7:55 and leaving from p.le Vittime delle Foibe at 9:40am – 10:30 – 11:20 – 12:10pm – 1:00 – 1:50 – 2:40 – 3:30 – 4:20 – 5:10 – 6:00 – 6:50 – 7:40
  • Line 3 (from Col di Piana to piazzale della stazione), every 50 minutes, leaving from Col di Piana at 9:30am – 10:20 – 11:10 – 12:00pm – 12:50 – 1:40 – 2:30 – 3:20 – 4:10 – 5:00 – 5:50 – 6:40 – 7:30 and leaving from Piazzale Vittime delle Foibe at 9:20am – 10:10 – 11:00 – 11:50 – 12:40pm – 1:30 – 2:20 – 3:10 – 4:00 – 4:50 – 5:40 – 6:30 – 7:20.

 

For more information:

Citizen Information Desk

Tel. 0437/913222 – info@comune.belluno.it

Vendors are asked to contact Servizio Att. Economiche: 0437 913175

Traffic information: Local Police 0437/913520

Porta Dojona
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Porta Dojona and its talking walls

Porta Dojona (Dojona Gate) is one of the most distinctive symbols of the city of Belluno. It has seen nearly one thousand years of Bellunese history, endured several restorations, been expanded and covered. But what you might not know is this gate hides a small secret of daily life. Read on to learn more. 

Porta Dojona is one of the five gates (four official and one “for emergencies”) that allows you to enter inside the city walls of Belluno, and is one of three that is still intact today.

We are talking about a real monument, one that is a testament to the history of Belluno since 1289: the year in which its internal archway was erected, originally called “di Foro” (public square) or “Mercato” (market), designed by Vecello da Cusighe and in honor of the count-bishop Adalgerlo of the 8th level.

The second part of the gate, as in the actual “facade” that overlooks Vittorio Emanuele Square, dates back to the Renaissance period, specifically 1553: it is the work of Niccolò Tagliapietra, built on request for chancellor Francesco Diedo (note the inscription above the arch FRANC. DIEDO. PRAET. PRAEF.Q. OPT). You can even see various recognizable Renaissance-style elements, such as the columns positioned on high pedestals, the triglyphs carved in the architrave and the two caryatids aside the Lion of San Marco.

One of the principal features of this evocative place of the city is the world that one enters by passing under the gate: you must however know that it has not always been this way. In reality, the passageway was first covered in 1622, thus giving Porta Dojona its characteristic feeling of a “small-scale arcade.”

Moreover, not even the name is the same as it was at the beginning: the gate was named “Dojona” in 1609 in honor of Giorgio Doglioni, aid to prince-bishop of Bressanone.

Have you ever heard someone refer to this gate as “Porta de la Cadene“? If that happened and you wanted to ask why, we’ll tell you: it takes this name from the drawbridge that was here until c. 1730 (when the moat was buried) from Via Mezzaterra.

But now we arrive at that which we had promised, the virtually hidden quirk of this gate: we have explained that this gate is a symbol of the city unto itself, in particular its walls, the inscriptions written mostly in Latin that recall the construction of the gate, its successive restoration projects and even the happenings of the city of Belluno. But there are also inscriptions less renowned and uncommon, which recount episodes of daily life.

Let us explain further. In the points shown using the arrows in the following image, if you look closely (we mean in person, if not, what beauty is there?), you can see written the names of people and their dates. Know who these people are? These are the autographs inscribed by the guards who protected this gate in the middle of the 1800s. And do you know how they left their permanent mark on the Porta Dojona? They did it with their bayonets.

Scritte porta

Photograph by Leonard Leo Graf.

Thanks to the group  Belluno e Provincia: cultura arte e storia that shared some of the information present in this article and to the research of Gigetto De Bortoli, Andrea Moro, Flavio Vizzutti, Belluno: storia, architettura, arte Belluno, 1984.

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Memorial Day: lest we forget

January 27, 1945, three in the afternoon, Auschwitz. A chilly day of a particularly harsh winter. The gates of the Polish death camp are torn down by the Red Army during its rapid advance from Vistola to Oder. At the head of the department it was Marshal Konev who first entered the lager.

January 27, 1945, three in the afternoon, Auschwitz. A written sign, “Arbeit macht frei”,welcomes the soldiers of the Red Army. Through their eyes the world will come to know how hell is made, and will never be the same.

January 27, 1945, three in the afternoon, Auschwitz. A liberation that has nothing joyful for those in Auschwitz who managed not to lose their lives; there are in fact too many mixed feelings of the survivors, the humiliation, the madness, the shame of being saved, the mistrust in mankind. Primo Levi tells us about it well.

A horror that touched everyone, including Belluno. Maybe not everyone knows that 983 people were deported from the province, of which 882 natives and about a hundred from outside. An articulate and complex framework, that of the deportation in the Belluno area, as explained by Professor Enrico Bacchetti of the Historical Institute of the Resistance and of the Contemporary Age-ISBREC, the leader of a research project aimed at the reconstruction of the history of those who, in the territory of Belluno, have known deportation and imprisonment.

During the conference entitled “Towards a historical biographical dictionary of deportation in the confines of Belluno”, held at the headquarters of the State Archives of Belluno on January 26, 2014, Professor Bacchetti insisted on the importance of studying the phenomenon of deportation: “Historians have been wondering for years about how many actually were deported in World War II”- says Professor of ISBEC – “maybe 10 or 12 million. But they are only figures that are the result of estimates, based on the documentation of the coffers of the lagers”.

The purpose of this research work is to approach the exact numbers starting from the local history, to build a historical geographic dictionary which is configured as a monument of paper due to those who paid such a high price  of war. Hence the appeal to all the inhabitants of the province of Belluno: collaborate in the construction of this important research through your memories of your families, of your acquaintances. Only in this way you will be able to to build a document as complete as possible, which can give a precise idea of ​​the phenomenon of deportation in the province of Belluno.

January 27, 2015, Belluno. An invitation to participate actively, collaborating to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust because “things that are forgotten” says Mario Rigoni Stern “may return”.

La-beffa-di-Baldenich
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The Baldenich Joke

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When a trick becomes the most effective weapon.

Maybe not everyone knows that even the Belluno prison can boast a famous story of escape: that which is known to history as the Baldenich Joke when twelve partisans managed to free seventy political prisoners.

It is June 16, 1944 and all is ready for the mission, Mariano Mandolesi, known by comrades as Carlo, leads his men to the gates of the Baldenich prison, where the Germans held their prisoners and that morning inside there are sixteen policemen and ten prison guards.

Their intent is to free Milo, who would be transferred to Trento by them in a few days to be shot and all the others with him, everyday victims of torture and ill-treatment. The whole operation was to take place without a fight, without a shot, without shedding further blood.

And this happened: the Baldenich Joke begins when Carlo comes with eight companions in German uniforms saying they have four prisoners to deliver. In broken German Carlo and others are turning to the police but they ask them for their incarceration documents.

The partisans have none and they try to take time, no guard realizes who is hiding really under the German jackets and hats, and they ask: “No one who speaks Italian?” Then came the prison guard who had just finished his monitoring tour and immediately becomes blocked by Biondino, who takes the pile with the keys to the cells.

Once the prisoners were freed, and the prison guards and police jailed the handful of fugitives go on foot towards the mountains. The prison guards are able to sound the alarm only twenty minutes later when Charles and the others are already at the slopes of Mount Serva, tired but excited to be able to realize the Baldenich Joke, without even firing a shot.

pattinaggio Belluno
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The Ice Garden in Belluno will stay until 25th January

wtmann

The Ice Garden in Belluno, opened the last 6th December, will stay in Piazza Duomo until sunday 25th January.

Located at the escalators exit and easy to reach from Lambioi Parking, this ice-rink is always open from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., and from 3 p.m to 7:30 pm. However, during the weekend the Ice Garden delays is opening at 10 a.m and the mornings from monday to friday are reserved for school classes, that can experience a different gym lesson.

Like in the past editions, the ice-rink gave moments of incredible fun during this year, thank to a cold and cloudless winter.
Adults and children, expert ice-skaters or not, challenged each other in front of the duomo, showing exciting races along the frozen flooring, acrobatic performances and funny falls.

And what about you? Have you ever skated on this Ice Garden? Tell us your experience.