Fiume Veneto

For centuries there were two Fiume here, and what divided them was the river itself. On one side stood Flumen intra acquae, also called Fiume Grande or Fiume dei Servi, the river of the serfs, which was a fief of the abbey of Sesto al Reghena; on the other Flumen extra acquae, that is Fiume Piccolo, administered by the imperial captain of Pordenone on behalf of the House of Austria. The same name, the same water, two different states. In 1248 the abbey of Sesto, being in debt, sold Fiume Grande to two counts da Prata, but kept the ecclesiastical administration, exercised through the pieve of Pescincanna. From 1420 Venice arrived, and the Venetian presence weighed more heavily than the feudal one: the prized timber of the wood of Fiume served to supply the Arsenal.

In the church of San Nicolò there was a right that lasted almost to our own day: it was the heads of families who elected their parish priest. They gave it up on the twenty-ninth of August 1965, and from that day the church was declared archpriestly. The coat of arms, granted the following year, is a count: a blue band representing the river and four gold stars, one for each hamlet. The name of the comune, for that matter, also arrived by correction: in the Napoleonic period a comune of Bannia was instituted, which after a few weeks changed its name to the present one. In the fields the lines of the Roman centuriation of Concordia can still be made out — the main decumanus passed through Marzinis and the tenth cardo is today a road at Pescincanna — and in the place names there remain the hollows called Rivate and a via Sacconi that comes from sacca, standing water.