On 9 November 1917, in a villa at Meolo, Luigi Cadorna handed over to Armando Diaz the supreme command of the Italian army: the army had just been broken at Caporetto and the front was falling back on the Piave, a few kilometres from here. The villa is still there, and it is one of more than ten Venetian villas standing within the boundaries of this municipality of six thousand people. In the parish church of San Giovanni Battista, meanwhile, the vault of the presbytery carries a cycle of paintings signed by Giandomenico Tiepolo and dated 1758: during that same war a bomb damaged them, so they were detached, put in safety and set back in their place in 1921.
Meolo lies two metres below the level of the Adriatic, and its fields can be farmed only because the water is drawn away: wide drainage canals gather it and a great lifting plant throws it into the Sile, at Portegrandi. The name says the same thing from the other end, since it comes from the Latin metulus, little heap: there was a rise of dry ground here in the middle of the marsh, and the older form Medulus is still on the municipal coat of arms. The town hall is a fifteenth-century house with a sundial of 1516 on its front. And the six contrade of the town, Albarato, Ca' Cappello, Ca' Corner, Candeara, Martellia and Palumbo, compete for a palio that includes a sack race, a relay and a rotating triangle on which the athletes lie down to travel it and ring the bell at the end.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 24 June; May brings the modern Palio, now held every two years
Meolo celebrates Saint John the Baptist on 24 June, in the church dedicated to him. In May, the modern Palio is held, annual until 2011 and now biennial, among the town's districts.
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 Meolo, but an easy day trip away.
