Tombolo

The Ezzelini were also known as da Onara, and Onara is a hamlet of this municipality: here they had a stronghold at a point where the borders of Vicenza, Padua and Treviso crossed in a confused tangle. Nothing of the castle survives except that a villa was built on its site; but the oratory of Santa Margherita remains, perhaps part of the same complex, with two splayed twelfth-century windows reopened by restorers.

Inside, under the plaster, frescoes have come back to light and a niche holding a terracotta as old as the church: until a few decades ago pregnant women would lay their hand on it as a votive gesture. Not far away is the marsh of Onara, fed by springs that never rise above fourteen degrees even in summer: mountain plants grow there because of it, a relic of the ice age.