Erto e Casso

Erto and Casso are two neighbouring villages that for centuries did not love one another. Erto is the older, and the dialect spoken there is one of transition between Ladin and Friulian; Casso came into being, tradition says, when woodcutters and charcoal burners from the Belluno area tried to settle at Erto and the men of Erto, distrustful, forced them to stop on the edge of the territory. They looked towards different valleys and answered to different bishops: in 1703 they were separated administratively as well.

Between the nineteen-fifties and sixties, in the gorge below the two villages, a dam more than two hundred and sixty metres high was built, the tallest in Italy. At the first test filling, in 1960, two landslides came down and an entire unstable slope was put under watch; the reservoir was filled twice more, without adequate measures being taken to protect the villages. On the night of 9 October 1963 Monte Toc slid into the lake: 347 people died at Erto and Casso, and about two thousand in all. The two villages were evacuated and the valley stayed empty for three years; then some of the inhabitants went back, in spite of the ban, and rebuilt them.