Maserada sul Piave

The name of this village is rubble: it comes from the Latin maceries and refers to the stony debris that the Piave carries downstream. Maserada stood at the crossing between the Claudia Augusta Altinate and the Postumia, and precisely along the line of the Postumia there have emerged tombs, funerary aediculae and pottery, together with roads perpendicular to it, traces of centuriation and the place name Castella, memory of an old stronghold or of a mansio. The old landscape is still in the names: Ronchi from runcare, to clear the ground; Saltore from saltus, the pastures; Salettuol from salicetum, the willow wood typical of the Piave's gravel bed. From the eleventh century the territory belonged to the Collalto, and from 1231 the church of San Giorgio was a dependency of the abbey of Nervesa. Standing on a road, however, meant being crossed and sacked: in 1229 by the fighting between Ezzelino da Romano and the Paduans, in 1328 by the troops of Enrico di Valse, camped here against Cangrande della Scala.

In 1922, when the state ordered every comune to provide itself with a coat of arms, the parish priest of Maserada prepared a sketch that put together the emblem of Treviso, two stars, the black and white quarters of the Collalto and a boat without a boatman. The comune simplified it, keeping the stars and the boat, and that is the coat of arms granted by royal decree in 1924, surmounted by a red ribbon with the word maceriata: a village of ferries that carries an empty boat in its heraldry. The Great War passed heavily through here: in November 1917 the population was evacuated, and in June 1918 the place became famous for the battle of the solstice, with the conquest of the Grave di Papadopoli, near Salettuol, by the Italian troops; in the village there is a historical museum devoted to that war. Of peace there remains instead the oratory of the Beata Vergine delle Vittorie, of 1721, with frescoes attributable to Gregorio Lazzarini, where tradition says that on 9 July 1722 the Virgin appeared to Zanetta Bariviera.