Pojana Maggiore

Pojana Maggiore has 4,459 inhabitants in the far south of the Vicenza province, where it touches those of Verona and Padua. The Adige once ran through here: the river moved further south after the early medieval upheavals that began with the Rotta della Cucca, in 589, and of its old bed there remain the names of some localities — Sabbioni, Conche, Rotte. The name of the town comes perhaps from the Lombard plojum, which means ploughed and cultivated land, or perhaps from the Slavic poljana, as in other places of the Veneto repopulated in the Middle Ages with Slav settlers. In 917 the emperor authorised the building of a Castrum Pojanae.

In so small a place there are two things one does not expect. The first is Villa Pojana, built by Andrea Palladio and today a World Heritage site along with the other Palladian villas of the Veneto. The second is the hamlet of Cicogna, which is divided between three provinces — Vicenza, Verona and Padua — and between three comuni. And there is a third thing, which says how tense the years after the Great War were: in 1920 the socialists won the elections in Pojana and in 1921 the communists, but the first fascio of the province had been founded here too; in the end, amid violence and threats, the whole council resigned and the comune was put under a commissioner.