The name says water: from the Rhaeto-Romance root aga with the Ladin suffix -ort, «place of water», because the basin the town sits in was marshy and flood-prone, a problem eased by medieval drainage and settled for good after the last great flood of 1748. Agordo then became a mining capital, with the Valle Imperina mines and the mining school founded in 1867; in the twentieth century the valley changed trade, and Luxottica had its headquarters here before moving to Milan. The Agordino is recognised as an area of Ladin linguistic minority.
From here comes a man few would associate with a Dolomite valley: Tito Livio Burattini, born in 1617. He went to Egypt, entered the Great Pyramid four times and was writing a complete description of the country, which in 1645 was stolen from him by a band of robbers as he crossed Hungary: nothing of those papers survives. In Poland he was the first to use the word «metre», defining it as the length of a pendulum whose swing lasts one second, and he built a model flying dragon that rose from the ground carrying a cat on board.
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📅 Every year, on 29 June; the Palio dei Cento brings together the eight hamlets
Agordo celebrates Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, with the pontifical insignia granted to the archdeacon by Pius IX for that solemnity.
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 Agordo, but an easy day trip away.
