At Malga Fossetta, on the footsteps of the “Piccoli maestri”.

The area of Malga Fossetta was the theatre of the two great Nazi-Fascist mopping-ups of June 5 and 10, 1944, which dispersed the “piccoli maestri” (little masters) group led by Toni Giuriolo and immortalised by Gigi Meneghello in the book of the same name. The partisan commander was sent on the Asiago Plateau by the CLN (“Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale”, National Liberation Committee) to try to direct and unify the partisans, deeply divided by mentality, ideology and even personal disagreements.

The shrine of Malga Fossetta.

Six were the partisans who died in those days, including Rinaldo Rigoni (Moretto), to whom the short story “Un ragazzo delle nostre contrade” (A boy of our lands) by Mario Rigoni Stern is dedicated. To remember, a path starts from Porta dell’Incudine and reaches the gravestones dedicated to them on the Isidoro’s top and spurs, where they fell to avoid being taken alive by the Germans. The Asiago’s writer returned on the episode also in the short story “Polenta e formaio zé bon,” (Polenta and cheese are good), in “Sentieri sotto la neve” (Paths under the snow). “Up there we felt free,” Meneghello wrote in “I piccoli maestri,” “and it is no wonder that these cirques, these woods, these flowering rocks have gone into ourselves, as ways of awareness, and they still seem to us the most lovely landscape we know.”

Go to MALGA FOSSETTA and SANT’ANTONIO itineraries