Belluno historical timeline

Origins

Bellunum was a Roman municipium on the road up the Piave, and the spur has been fortified since well before that. It became a Lombard duchy and then a bishopric with real temporal power over the surrounding valleys.

Turning points

Belluno submitted to Venice in 1404. Four centuries of Venetian rule gave the town its palaces, its arcaded squares and the Palazzo dei Rettori from which the Republic's governors administered the mountains.

Influential people

The painter Sebastiano Ricci and the wood sculptor Andrea Brustolon were both born here in the seventeenth century. Brustolon's carved furniture -- figures rather than ornament, holding up the tables they support -- is in collections across Europe.

Cultural evolution

From the nineteenth century the province emptied. Emigration from these valleys to Austria, Germany, Brazil and the United States was among the heaviest in Italy, and the depopulation of the smaller villages has never really reversed.

Present-day significance

On 9 October 1963 a landslide fell into the reservoir behind the Vajont dam, 25 km up the valley. The wave overtopped the dam -- which held -- and destroyed Longarone and several villages, killing close to two thousand people. It remains the defining event of the province's modern history, and a case study in engineering responsibility.