Cornedo Vicentino

The name comes from a plant. Cornedo is from the Latin cornus, the cornelian cherry, or from cornetum, meaning a wood of cornelian cherries: these wild shrubs with small, slightly sour fruit covered the hills of the middle Agno valley where the town stands. Until 1928 the comune was called simply Cornedo, and the adjective was added after the annexation of the Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy, so that it would be clear at once which Cornedo was meant. The first real growth revolves around the castle on the hill of San Sebastiano, which the documents show as already existing in 974; nothing of the castle is left, and at the foot of the hill stands the church built in 1469 and entrusted to the Servites.

Of the other local family, the Zamperetti, a story is handed down that is worth telling for the way it is told. To Arnaldo Zamperetti, who lived between the eleventh and the twelfth century, a physician, historian and traveller, is attributed the translation of the «diverse sorte di banchetti» of Timachidas of Rhodes, eleven volumes of ancient Greek cookery; having come into contact with the medical school of Salerno he is said to have supposed a link between diet and health, and to have brought a good many Greek recipes into the habits of the Venetian table. Of their castle the ruins remain in the district that still bears the family name; the fief then passed to the Trissino, the male line having died out.