Gosaldo

Gosaldo is a scattered comune at the foot of the Pale di San Martino, with its town hall in the hamlet of Don. For two centuries it lived underground: mercury was mined at Vallalta from 1770 to 1963, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, at the height of the work, it was the sixth most important mercury mine in Europe. On the municipal arms there is a golden caduceus, the staff that is put into the hand of Mercury.

When the mine began to be no longer enough, the people of Gosaldo invented another trade: making chairs. From the middle of the nineteenth century until after the war the chairmakers of Gosaldo travelled northern Italy and abroad selling their work, living half nomadic lives and even having a jargon of their own, which they called scabelament del contha. Then came 4 November 1966: the flood carried away roads and whole hamlets — California was never lived in again — and some of the roads were only put back thirty years later. The village, which then had more than two thousand inhabitants, has not stopped emptying since that day.