The name says a high ditch, that is a deep-cut riverbed, and geology has proved it right: recent research has shown that in Roman times the main branch of the Tagliamento passed through here, crossed by a ford. The village is born of the river, and the oldest evidence confirms it: the remains of a paleo-Venetic sanctuary of the fourth century BC, perhaps dedicated to the cult of water deities. The first written document is a bull of 1186 by which pope Urban III granted the bishop of Concordia civil and religious power over Fossalta and its appurtenances.
Near the present centre stood a castle that the bishops of Concordia used as a summer residence; it passed in fief to the Pers family and was destroyed as early as the thirteenth century. Under Venice the village went on being counted part of Friuli, in the district of Cordovado, and only in the Austrian period did it end up in the province of Venice; the present name dates from 1867. In the nineteen-fifties the Villanova estate became Gaetano Marzotto's building site: from it grew a group that holds together textiles, wine with the Cantine Santa Margherita and glass with the Industrie Zignago.
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📅 Every year, on 12 April, in the town of the Castello di Fratta
Fossalta di Portogruaro celebrates Saint Zeno on 12 April, in the church dedicated to him. The town holds the Castello di Fratta, the famous setting of Ippolito Nievo's novel «Confessions of an Italian».
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Fossalta di Portogruaro, but an easy day trip away.
