Salgareda

In November 1917 Salgareda found itself on the Piave line and was occupied by the Austro-Hungarians. On Christmas Eve the soldiers in the trenches began to play and sing towards the Italians on the other bank, asking them not to fire at least for that evening, and saying that their own batteries too had been silent for hours; the Italians accepted, and for one night the weapons stayed quiet. The episode is recorded in the war diaries of the soldier Antonio Rotunno. An Austrian report, however, explains it differently: that truce served to withdraw without pressure the troops holding the bend of Zenson, who had been ordered to pull back. The village was liberated on 30 October 1918, when the Third Army crossed the river here.

Of the earlier Salgareda almost nothing is left. The sixteenth-century church, built against the river embankment, held an altarpiece by Palma il Giovane and one attributed to Tiepolo: it was razed to the ground. Of villa Rebecca only the oratory remained standing. After the war the village was rebuilt a kilometre further from the Piave, and the new parish church, designed by Alberto Alpago Novello and Ottavio Cabiati, had its first stone laid in 1922 and was consecrated in 1937. On the coat of arms there are a bunch of grapes and a weeping willow, which is probably where the name comes from.