Chiusaforte

The village stands where the Fella valley narrows between the mountains, and that is where its name comes from: in 1072 it is written ad Clausam, at the narrows. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the patriarch of Aquileia Ulric von Eppenstein set up a muda here, a toll station, with its fortification and castle; and it was the toll itself that made the place desirable, for from then on it was fought over by the counts of Gorizia, the dukes of Carinthia, the archdukes of Austria and finally Venice. The name Chiusaforte is recent: it came with a royal decree of 1867, when new compound names were being made up to tell apart the towns of the kingdom that shared a name, and here they chose to recall the medieval fort.

From 1878 the railway to Tarvisio ran through here, and Chiusaforte had its own station. During the Second World War the village was bombed repeatedly by the Allies because of the railway bridge that led into Austria; then came the earthquake of 1976, which brought a great deal down. The line was abandoned in 1995, when it was doubled on another route: a cycle path now runs along the old track, and the station has become a stopping place for those coming through by bicycle.