In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries settlers from Bavaria, Tyrol and Bohemia came to this area, called in by the prince-bishop to work the mines: in 1330 the king of Bohemia granted one of his subjects the right to dig for silver here and in the neighbouring villages. When the mines ran out, those miners took to clearing the land, and the farmsteads were born: in sixteenth-century documents their names are all German.
The language of those settlers has almost vanished. In 1590 the bishop of Feltre wrote that Vignola needed a parish priest able to speak both Italian and German; and when in 1833 the German scholar Johann Andreas Schmeller passed through and interviewed a local man, he filled fifteen pages of notes that have remained the only record of that speech. Today only a small part of the inhabitants belong to the Mòcheno language group.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Vignola-Falesina
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
