Quinto di Treviso

The name of this village is a measurement: it indicated a mansio, a staging post placed five miles from Treviso, probably along the road that led to Padua; and the proof that the count works is close by, because in the comune of Morgano there is the locality of Settimo, the seventh. A document of 992 records that the bishops had properties in these parts and perhaps a stronghold too, but to see the name Quinto written down one must wait for 3 May 1152, when a bull of pope Eugene III confirmed the dependence of the pieve of San Cassiano on the diocese of Treviso: it was the seat of one of the four archpriestships of the diocese, with other pievi under it from Istrana to San Biagio di Callalta. Then the vital centre of the village moved south, to the banks of the Sile, and the pieve stayed isolated and lost importance; the river, in exchange, held up the economy for centuries with its mills. Another piece of infrastructure lasted much less: from 1941 to 1947 the Treviso-Ostiglia railway passed here, with a station of its own.

The most surprising thing is in the church of Santa Cristina, which is a recent building: rebuilt in neo-Romanesque style around 1930, with the bell tower unusually set above the entrance portal, and consecrated in 1933 by bishop Andrea Giacinto Longhin. Inside, however, there are the altarpiece with the Madonna enthroned with the Child between Saints Christina, Peter, Liberale and Jerome and the lunette with the dead Christ and the angels: Lorenzo Lotto painted them in 1505. Then there is a house that no longer exists, villa Borghesan, assigned to the poor families of the village as soon as the war was over: there Red Canzian was born, the future bassist of the Pooh, and the villa was pulled down after a small whirlwind, in the middle of the nineteen fifties. In that same house had lodged almost all the airmen of the ninety-first squadron, the squadron of the aces, Francesco Baracca among them, who stayed there until the day of his death.