There are plenty of gold and silver mines in the territory, and yet the name cannot come from them: Auronzo is a pre-Roman place, so the Latin aurum is ruled out by chronology before it is ruled out by philology. A theory worth considering brings it closer instead to the Eboruntii, said to have been the ancient inhabitants of Cadore. The valley too has turned out to be much older than anyone believed: the first Roman structures came to light only in the nineteen-nineties, in a private house in via Tarin, and from there the discoveries followed one another until a wholly new picture emerged, with the Ansiei valley inhabited since at least the second century before Christ. On Monte Calvario, behind the church of Santa Giustina, a place of worship active for six centuries is still being dug, and its inscriptions show that Venetic writing was used here for at least the whole of the first century after Christ, much later than down in the plain: a delay which, the source holds, makes it the missing link towards the birth of runic writing. In the hamlet of Malon, moreover, a few pre-Roman potsherds gave sense to a name the valley people had always repeated: those dry-stone terraces they called the altars of the pagans.
The longest quarrel, on the other hand, was with the village beyond the border. For centuries Auronzo disputed with Dobbiaco the possession of Misurina and some pastures near it; in 1738 it vowed to raise a chapel to the Madonna delle Grazie to bring the clashes to an end, and had it built by Matteo Pamperch, an architect from Val Badia, consecrating it in 1745. The question was settled in 1753, and on that occasion a wrought-iron cock with three holes in its belly was set on top of the dome, in memory of the legend of the old woman and the cock, to which the solving of the conflict is credited. That cock stands in the municipal arms beside the emblem of Cadore and the red and green assigned to Auronzo by the Venetian Republic. The woods and pastures belonged to the Magnifiche Regole of Villagrande and Villapiccola, collective property, inalienable and indivisible, until in 1806 Napoleon suppressed the regole and handed the estate over to the newly born comuni to administer.
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📅 Every year, on 7 October
On 7 October Auronzo di Cadore celebrates its patrons Saint Justina and Saint Prosdocimus of Padua; the municipal territory includes the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, among the most famous peaks of the Dolomites.
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 Auronzo di Cadore, but an easy day trip away.
