The shrine of Granezza (ph: www.caiasiago.it)

Battlefield area during the Great War, as evidenced by the English cemetery, which among others houses the remains of the writer Vera Brittain and his brother Edward, on 6 and 7 September 1944 Piana di Granezza was the theatre of the bloodiest battle of the Resistance in the Vicenza’s territory. 37 people, 23 partisans of the Ortigara Alpine Division and 14 soldiers of the Speer Organisation, executed as deserters, were killed in the Nazi-fascist mopping-up and the following massacre. The losses suffered by the Nazi-fascists, never precisely formalised, were heavy. Days of terror followed on the Plateau, with fires, shootings and devastation.

At the beginning of the Path 888 “dei Partigiani” which ends in the Barental’s valley, a shrine near the Rifugio Granezza lists the names of 250 partisans fallen in the Pedemontana territory, from Pasubio to Grappa. On the southern boundary of the plain, on the Monte Corno of Lusiana, a 26-metre-high monument is dedicated to the Unknown Fallen for Freedom. Every year, in September, a meeting commemorates those events.

At Granezza in August 1944 the Major Bill Tilman of the British Army was parachuted to reach the partisan formations in the Belluno’s territory, activating direct connections with them. Albeit with several detours, his route has become the “Alta Via Tilman,” which from the War Memorial of Asiago leads to Falcade.

Go to MAZZE-PRA DEL GIGLIO and CONTRADA ZOCCHI itineraries