Trebaseleghe

Since 1185, every 7 September, Trebaseleghe has held the Antica fiera dei mussi, the donkey fair: it has been going for more than eight hundred years. The village appears for the first time shortly before, in a bull of pope Eugene III of 1152, which confirmed among the possessions of the bishop of Treviso also the «plebem de Tribus Basilicis cum castro et villa» — the pieve of Trebaseleghe with its castle and village.

On the name, though, four hypotheses have been put forward and none has won. The most immediate is «three basilicas», perhaps three holy places or three churches bound together; another says «three vici», that is three hamlets, and indeed in antiquity the settlements were three: castle, pieve and village. Then some read «Terre Basilice», the lands where the bishop of Treviso held extensive property, and others «Tribusi-Eleghe», from an ancient land-surveying division dedicated to a Venetic deity. The coat of arms, granted in 1920, chose the first: below the bishop's castle there are three basilical porticoes. Today's archpriest's church is neo-Gothic, of 1913, but the bell tower is of the sixteenth century, and inside there is a Tamburini organ that came from the cathedral of Treviso.