Domegge di Cadore

Around here poverty came to an end in two different ways, half a century apart. The first was to leave: at the beginning of the twentieth century the Cadore emptied out as half of Italy was emptying out, and among the victims of the worst mining disaster in the history of the United States — Monongah, in West Virginia, on 6 December 1907 — there is recorded an emigrant from Vallesella, one of the hamlets of Domegge. The second way was to stay and change trade: for more than one hundred and twenty years spectacle frames have been made here, and in the second half of the twentieth century that industry brought the whole of the Cadore a sudden improvement in living conditions, with the consequence that fields, woods and pastures were abandoned. Among the local firms is Giorgio Fedon, and people still come up here to buy glasses.

The village stands on the right bank of the Piave, which here the dam of Pieve di Cadore holds back to form the lake of Centro Cadore; the altitudes run from the six hundred and fifty-five metres of the old part of Vallesella to the nine hundred of the hamlet of Grea, with the Marmarole on one side and the Monfalconi and the Spalti di Toro on the other. That people have lived here for a very long time is said by the finds: in a quarry at Crodola a bronze sickle and a winged axe of the thirteenth or twelfth century before Christ came to light, the oldest sign of human presence in the whole of Centro Cadore, and at Pegnola an iron helmet four or five centuries later which closely resembles certain Celtic helmets from the Gail valley, but which is of local make: the fashion came from outside, the smith was here. The coat of arms, recognised in 1940, shows two towers chained to a fir tree and, in the other half, Saint George with the dragon.