The name says exactly what the place was: from the Latin pratum with an augmentative suffix, the big meadow. And the first document, of 1050, which fixed the boundary between the dioceses of Trent and Bressanone, calls it precisely «pratum magnum quod dicitur Pradassis». The valley floor was a great pasture between two torrents that spread wherever they pleased, and the first huts went up in the safer spots, on the mountain slopes, built by the shepherds of Tesero, who later settled here for good. Tradition says the village began with twelve masi.
Predazzo is also a page of geology. Its basin comes from the collapse of a volcano some two hundred million years ago, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century Giuseppe Marzari Pencati noticed here granite, lava and marine sediments together: scientists came from all over Europe, from Humboldt to von Richthofen to Dolomieu, and met at the Nave d'Oro inn, so that the village came to be called the gateway to the Dolomites. Meanwhile the Regola Feudale still works: about eight hundred vicini gathered in nineteen historic surnames, and on Saint Martin's day each collects his share of the proceeds of the common woodland.
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📅 Every year, on 3 May; early October brings the Desmontegada de le Vache
Predazzo celebrates Saints Philip and James on 3 May, in the church dedicated to them. The first weekend of October, decorated cows return to town from the highland pastures with the shepherds, in the Desmontegada de le Vache.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Predazzo, but an easy day trip away.
