Mareno di Piave

Through here passed the via Ungaresca, which in the Middle Ages was the main link between the Marca Trevigiana and Friuli: it touched what are today the frazioni of Santa Maria del Piave, Bocca di Strada and Ramera, and then went on towards San Fior, Godega di Sant'Urbano, Orsago, Cordignano, Caneva and Polcenigo. The name of Bocca di Strada, the mouth of the road, still says what that point was. In 1009, near the monastery of Santa Maria del Piave, a building was raised called the Hospitale, which served to receive the pilgrims on their journey: passing here meant having a roof. Between the twelfth and the fourteenth century the village was dominated by the bigger Conegliano, and in 1388 it entered the Republic of Venice, where it stayed until the fall of the Serenissima, in 1797.

The comune bears the name of a river that barely brushes it: the Piave concerns only the extreme south of the territory, on the border with Spresiano, while the water that bathes the capoluogo and the frazioni of Ramera and Soffratta is that of the Monticano. And yet the name Mareno di Piave was established by royal decree on 10 November 1887, and the river, from a distance, has decided a great deal: the reclamations begun in the Middle Ages went on for several centuries even after the famous flood of the Piave of 1368. Four Venetian villas remain, two of the seventeenth century and the others of the eighteenth and the nineteenth — villa Tron Donà dalle Rose with its oratory, villa Montalbano Balbi Valier Paoletti, villa Lavezzari Mantese Angelina, villa Wiel Dall'Armellina. And a departure remains: in the nineteen fifties and sixties many people of Mareno emigrated to Switzerland, Germany and France, and overseas to Canada, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela.