Arsiè

The most important feast of Arsiè was born from the dead who stayed here. When new parishes broke away from the pieve of Arsiè — Enego, Primolano, Fastro — the parish priest of the day, don Sartorio, took to inviting all the former parishioners once a year, so that they might come and gather beside their dead, who were still buried here. Thus was born the Feast of the Souls, made official by a bull of pope Alexander VII on 15 October 1666; and since the moment coincided with the end of the mountain grazing, those who came took the chance to barter and sell animals and mountain produce. The feast of the dead became a fair, the Fair of the Souls, and it is still held on the third Sunday of October. It is a rite this village has gone on deserving: from the nineteenth century onwards people left here for Brazil and Argentina, then for the United States, France and Belgium, and in the sixties for Milan and Turin. Today fewer than one inhabitant in ten is under fifteen, and almost a third are over sixty-four.

The other story is up on the peaks. After Caporetto, Arsiè found itself in the Austrian rear until the end of the war, and a good many forts had been built on its territory that served no purpose at all. The fort of Cima Lan was never used, and it was the Italians themselves who blew it up, for fear it would fall into enemy hands. Fort Leone, at Cima Campo, was not used either, but they did not blow it up: the commander had the gun barrels removed and logs of wood painted black put in their place, so that from the air the fort would still look armed. That fort can be visited. Lower down, in 1954, by damming the Cismon torrent to produce electricity, the lake of Corlo was created.