Cimadolmo

The name is made up of cima and olmo, elm, and what it meant exactly is not clear: perhaps it should be read figuratively, as the far end of a place called Olmo. But an elm inside a place name can carry three different things with it, and the source lists all three. In antiquity the tree was held to be sacred; it could also mark the spot where the representatives of the community gathered; and it was planted in great numbers during the late medieval reclamations, because it draws moisture out of the ground efficiently. Sacred tree, council chamber or drainage tool: here, where it is the Piave that decides everything, the third reason is by no means the least likely. The elm stands in the municipal arms together with the countryside, the river and the island, that is the Grave di Papadopoli.

The rest of the story was written by water. The first settlement grew in Roman times at Stabiuzzo, where a military post was founded along the via Postumia, beside the Piave, and for centuries that was the chief place of the territory, with a market and a pieve named in 1152 among the possessions of the bishop of Treviso. The continual floods brought it down: the church was destroyed and the market moved away, first to Ponte di Piave and then to Oderzo. Cimadolmo fared no better — between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries the church of San Silvestro was destroyed more than once — and only the dyke built between 1884 and 1886 allowed steady growth in the following century. Then came the Great War, with the front on the Piave and bitter fighting. Today the territory is mostly vineyard, but the product that carries the town's name is white asparagus.