Fonzaso

On the twentieth of January 1875 Luigi Buzzati, of Fonzaso, rummaging among the ruins of the castle of Arten, found two silver basins and a cup. The first basin is circular, of fine silver, forty-nine centimetres across and five high, resting on a cylindrical base; at its centre is a circle divided by twenty-eight rays, and between the two circles runs an inscription in Gothic minuscule that reads: Gelaimir Vandalorum et Alanorum Rex. It is the name of a king of the Vandals and the Alans. The second basin, smaller, carries in relief a nuptial allegory: a nearly naked man with a staff, a woman by an altar offering him a lily, between them a child who seems to present the bride to the groom, and below two doves drinking from the same cup. How the silver of an African sovereign ended up in a ruined castle at the foot of the Dolomites, the source does not say.

Metal, in any case, was at home here. From Fonzaso came the great sword-makers of the sixteenth century — Zandonà, Andrea Ferara, Giacomo da Fonzaso — whose blades were known through almost the whole western world of the day and ended up in the hands of reigning monarchs too. The town, which stands at the meeting of the roads between Bassano, the Feltre country and the Primiero, and which the forty-sixth parallel crosses, later had harder centuries: after Caporetto it was occupied by the Austro-Hungarians while the fighting raged on the Grappa above, the people went hungry and the Spanish flu killed more than three hundred of them. There is one story, though, that ends well: in the first years of the Second World War a dozen Jewish refugees were interned at Fonzaso, and when the Germans came the group left the town heading south, towards the liberated territories. They all saved themselves, and by 1944 they had already reached the collection camps in Puglia, at Bari and Santa Maria al Bagno.