Aviano

The oldest symbol of the community is a seal of the mid-fifteenth century bearing an eagle, probably taken from the emblem of the patriarchate of Aquileia; in documents of 1742 that eagle has two heads and a crown. It kept them even after the unification of Italy, but during the First World War the coat of arms was simply not used, because it looked too much like the symbol of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In 1925 a council resolution replaced the double-headed eagle with an Italian eagle with spread wings gripping in its talons a ribbon with the motto COMUNITAS AVIANENSIS, and the arms were officially recognised by decree in 1943. The emblem in use today has gone back to the two heads.

In 1477 and again in 1499 Aviano and the villages nearby were devastated by raids of Turkish troops, in which a great part of the population was killed or carried off as prisoners. And in 1631, in the hamlet of Villotta, was born the Capuchin Marco d'Aviano, the preacher who was spiritual guide of the Catholics at the siege of Vienna in 1683, the one whose failure halted Ottoman expansion towards western Europe. Later the plain below the mountains drew another kind of history: in 1911 one of the first airfields of the Italian air force was built here, and it went on growing until, in the nineteen fifties, it became the NATO base. Above the town rises the Cavallo massif, with the ski resort of Piancavallo which from 1979 hosted women's World Cup races; and in the town there is one of the chief Italian centres for cancer treatment and research.