Marano Vicentino

In 1284 four brothers bought the water. Ecelino, Bonagiunta, Benincasa and Enrico called Bruto, sons of Enrico Signoreto da Marano and lords of Marano themselves, bought from count Beroardo di Schio and his son Alberto the water of the millstream derived from the Leogra torrent, for five hundred pounds. The price says how much it was worth: the water served not only to irrigate the fields, but to move the mills that ground the cereals, the hammers that worked the iron and the fulling machines that combed the wool. The main canal of the village is still called the Roggia Maestra, and right here, inside the comunal territory, the Leogra joins the Timonchio. Already in Roman times, moreover, the road that came from Vicenza passed here to reach Salzena, today Santorso, and served as the hinge of the centuriation of the upper Vicenza country, with its grid of roads, canals and plots to be assigned to the settlers.

The church of Santa Maria is documented at least from 1186, and around the year one thousand it had the dignity of a pieve: it was, that is, the seat of an archpriest who was the bishop of Vicenza's vicar. A document of 1108 records an archpriest of the plebs marani donating all his goods at Ignago to the Benedictine monastery of San Felice, and in 1123 pope Callixtus II confirmed to the nuns of San Pietro in Vicenza the synodus et plebes Marani. Then the pieve lost importance, so much so that in 1303 it turned out to be subject to that of Malo. A cob of maize also carries the name of this place: at the beginning of the twentieth century a variety of maize was selected here, the Marano, which around Vicenza they called maranelo, precisely from the place of origin. The cobs are red tending to orange, the kernels have a glassy look and are set in a spiral, and they generally do not exceed twenty centimetres. It yields little, and that is exactly the point: the polenta made from it has an intense taste, and today a consortium of producers protects it.