Teglio Veneto

The village is named after the tree people used to gather under. Teglio comes from the Latin tilia, the lime, once very common in these parts, and the arms carry a lime tree on a silver field, set there in deference to the medieval custom of assembling around such trees. On the origins the scholars disagree: for some it was a settlement of woodworkers, for others the territory lay inside a centuriation, that is the sharing out of plots to Roman soldiers at the end of their service; the finds say in any case that people lived here already in the first centuries of the Christian era. The written name appears as Villam de Tileo and Plebem de Tileo in the bull that Urban III granted between 1186 and 1187 to Gionata, bishop of Concordia, recognising his temporal and spiritual jurisdiction over much of western Friuli; then as Ecclesiam de Tileo in 1191, when bishop Romolo assured the chapter of Concordia the revenues of the pieve. The one church of the village, dedicated to Saint George the martyr, was probably founded in the early Middle Ages.

Teglio is in the Veneto but speaks Friulian. Beside Italian and Venetian, western Friulian is used here, and that is no accident: the comune lay in what was the mandamento of Portogruaro and keeps old ties with Friuli. The provincial council of Venice recognised it officially with the resolution of 21 December 2006, protecting Friulian as a minority and historic language: so Teglio could enter the territorial area of protection provided by law 482 of 99. The rest of the comune lies in the plain between the Veneto and Friuli: the parish church of San Giorgio is of the nineteenth century, at Cintello there is that of San Giovanni Battista and the stop on the Casarsa-Portogruaro railway, and in the territory the former military base Site Castor remains.