The name Spinea comes from a fishbone, more or less: under the Romans this land was divided into centuriation grids with the Muson as the boundary between the territories of Padua and Altino, and the roads of the two grids, laid out at different angles, crossed to form a fishbone pattern. For centuries, though, the most important place in the area was not Spinea but Rossignago, where the parish church stood as the religious and social reference point for all the surrounding villages; each village, though dependent on the parish, governed itself through its own regola, with a meriga elected by the assembly of heads of household for administrative and fiscal matters. It was only with the arrival of Venice, in the fourteenth century, that Spinea took the lead, and the parish itself moved there.
The land was long a frontier and a battleground, defended by the castle of Orgnano against the Hungarians and rival factions: torn down in the sixteenth century by order of the Republic after the war of the League of Cambrai, only its watchtower remains, now the bell tower of the church of Saints Vito and Modesto. In the seventeenth century the Venetians diverted the course of the Muson much further south, into the Taglio Nuovo, to stop its silt from choking the lagoon: the old riverbed survives only in the course of the Cimetto stream. Today Spinea is part of the commuter belt of Mestre along the Miranese road, with one of the highest population densities in the Veneto, second only to Padua for how much of its land is covered in concrete.
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📅 Every year, on 9 March
Spinea celebrates Saint Frances of Rome on 9 March, in a territory that has long favoured human settlement thanks to the dense presence of watercourses, including the ancient Muson river.
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 Spinea, but an easy day trip away.
