Camisano Vicentino

In 1313, during the wars of the Paduans against Cangrande della Scala, the castle of Camisano — «a place not a little troublesome to the Vicentines», as the sources put it — was taken and burned. It was held by Martino Cane, a Paduan nobleman, together with many Paduans and with German soldiers; Cangrande came with a great company of soldiers, took it by force of arms and set it on fire. The worst fate went to the Germans: Guarnerio de Homberg, the emperor's vicar in Vicenza, had one of them dragged, and many others were hanged for having gone into Paduan pay. It is that day that the Palio of Camisano recalls. Of the castle nothing remains: it probably stood at the place still called Cà Alta, or Castellano.

The mother church of the territory was the pieve of Santa Maria, and in the thirteenth century its dependencies included the churches of Camisano, Rampazzo, Poiana di Granfion, Bevadoro, Gaianigo and Grossa. It was already active in Lombard times, and most of its daughters are older than the year one thousand; as they became parishes in their own right, however, the mother church declined, until it was reduced to a humble curacy — and only in 1954 did a bishop's decree give it back the rank of parish, its role having long since passed to the church of San Nicolò. The first document naming the village is of 1050, the donation of a farm «in the county of Vicenza, in the village called Kamesiano»; and from 1377 to 1853 Camisano was the seat of a civil vicariate, with forty-one villages subject to it. About the name nothing is known: some derive it from a Camisius and some from Ca' di Masanus, but there are no documents.