Vito d'Asio

Vito d'Asio is a scattered municipality, and the town hall does not stand at Vito but in the hamlet of Anduins; the territory runs the whole length of the Val d'Arzino, with dozens of small settlements. The name comes from the Latin vicus, a village, which in Friulian became Vît. In the first half of the tenth century, when the Hungarians were raiding the plain, people fled up onto Monte Asio, then all forest: many of those families never went back down, and the villages grew from them. In 1448 Tristano di Savorgnan demanded a double tithe of wine from the households of Vito; they sent their representatives to protest at his castle of Osoppo, and he put them in irons and held them there in cold and hunger, threatening them with torture, until they gave in.

Girolamo Ortis was born here, the unfortunate young man whose story gave Ugo Foscolo his Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis. And here at Pielungo was born count Giacomo Ceconi, who came back to his village rich and filled it with works: the church of Sant'Antonio, schools, a craft school, a consumer cooperative and the Strada Regina Margherita, opened in 1891, which drops from Pielungo towards the plain. He was mayor as well, and spent his last years in the castle he had built for himself.