San Martino di Lupari

The council chamber of San Martino di Lupari's town hall is also a museum. It houses the Museo Umbro Apollonio, a permanent painting exhibition unique in Italy for how precise its focus is: Constructivism from 1960 onwards. It was born in 1981, when the council bought the works that had made their mark at the Contemporary Art Biennials held here, and it bears the name of the critic who had tied his own to that movement, a university teacher and director of the Venice Biennale. The collection numbers 96 works by 77 artists: among the Italians the local Edoer Agostini, and then Frenchmen, a Swiss, three Argentinians, a Spaniard.

The rest of the village is made of very different things. At Campagnalta there are the Motte, the remains of a Bronze Age settlement that some scholars have supposed was an observatory. The old church of San Martino and the priest's house, in the little square, were designed in the eighteenth century by the Venetian Giorgio Massari, and the presbytery looks like a Venetian villa in miniature; the bell tower beside it is of 1603. The new church, begun in 1927 and consecrated in 1958, is instead covered in mosaics. And here is the seat of OZ, which makes alloy wheels for cars and motorcycles for the world.