The airport “Romeo Sartori” of Asiago.

They knocked down the houses in the Micheloni district, the engineer’s farmhouse, the dairy cooperative; then they started levelling out the ground, reducing the slope, bringing in over a thousand cubic meters of dirt and gravel on decauville railcarts (…)

many of the older people from town and the surronding area would go spend the day watching all the frenzied work, out there, and they’d shake their heads and agree how so much tourned-over soil would have made such a beautiful potato field, big enough to feed thousands for a year – or what a beautiful Alpine summer pasture – enough for a hundred and fifty dairy cows”.

From “Giacomo’s seasons”, translated by Elizabeth Harris, Autumn Hill Books, 2012

The context

In the novel, Rigoni Stern, before telling about the construction of the airport, located more or less halfway between his home in Val Giardini and the centre of Asiago, remembers the previous gliding flights on the plateau, which also led to the organisation of a rally in 1924, during which the first national record of duration for a glider was beaten. “It was known and told – says the writer – that in 1915 on the meadows of the Sbanz district there were airplanes, and that right there the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio flew above Trento to launch a tricolor flag; also from Sisemol they had launched gliders with elastic cords, after pulling them up by mule. They had come even from Germany.”

The place

Opened in 1936 and dedicated to Romeo Sartori – aviator of Canove, silver medal in World War I and ace of acrobatic flying – this airport is the only one in Italy above 1000 metres of altitude. Provided with two airstrips, one 1120 metres long of asphalt and one 1100 metres long of grass, the airport is open to traffic from Monday to Friday with a notice of at least six hours, Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. without limitations. It is open also to the VDS flight activity with ultralight aircrafts, upon specific request by authorisation form downloadable from the site www.aeroportoasiago.it/, telephone and fax 0424.465845.

The path from Cinque Street to the airport.

The ancient oven fo Ebene hamlet.

In the south side of the airstrip, at the Ebene hamlet, you can see an old baker’s oven, with which Rigoni Stern dealt on several occasions. “Dear “Compagni” – he wrote in a 2007 letter to ANPI, the National Association of Italian Partisans – yes, “Compagni”, because it is a beautiful and ancient name that we must not let fall into disuse. It derives from the Latin “cum panis,” which unites those who eat the same bread.” It is reachable by a beautiful path bordered with stoan platten, that climb up to Col del Sole from hamlet Cinque.

(Please note that, in Italian, the communist term “comrade” is translated in “compagno”, literally “companion.” The literal translation of “comrade”, that is “camerata”, was used instead by the fascists).