Gruaro

Gruaro was part of the Patria del Friuli, and Friulian is still spoken here and in the villages around; in 2006 the comune, together with three of its neighbours, held a referendum asking its own people whether to leave the Veneto and pass to Friuli-Venezia Giulia — the result was void, because the quorum was not reached. Its river port on the Lemene, which was called Porto Gruaro, later became a town of its own, much bigger, and it kept the name: Portogruaro. Another of its ports, Portovecchio, is today a hamlet of that same town. The village's birth certificate is a concession of bishop Gervino of 1140, but the first news of communal life is older: in 838 an emperor granted these lands to the abbey of Sesto al Reghena, and it was the monks who formed the settlement and put a castle on it.

In 1294 a eucharistic miracle is said to have happened here: on a tablecloth from the church of San Giusto blood stains appeared, produced by a consecrated host that had stayed among the folds of the cloth. The relic is not here — the feudal lords of the day had it taken to Valvasone, where it still is; in front of the church there is a monument that recalls the event. At Molini di Stalis the mills, restored now, are the ones Ippolito Nievo names in the Confessions of an Italian. And in March 1933 a vaccine against diphtheria was tried out at Gruaro: twenty-eight children died.