Orsago

Orsago was a wild place full of marshes, and the place name Palù still records it. The acid of the peat bogs preserved very ancient seeds, and from those seeds the forest that once stood here has been reconstructed: broadleaves and larches, a thick undergrowth, reed beds. Almost everything we know came out when the marshes were levelled, with the land reclamation of the fifties: a real settlement was identified then, and more recent digs have found the remains of a pile-dwelling.

Here the ancient Veneti probably had a sanctuary, and a sanctuary for them was not a building: it was a wood, a tree, a spring, and into the water coins and sacred objects were thrown. At Prà della Stalla votive plaques came to light showing a divinity in a pleated robe with an animal skin over the left arm, together with coins of the republican age. Much later the village belonged to the Da Camino, passed to the Patriarchate of Aquileia and in 1389 to Venice.