Pove is the last village you meet on the right before entering the Canale di Brenta, the valley that leads to the Valsugana, to Trento and towards northern Europe; and for anyone coming down from the north it is the first village that opens onto the Po plain. It is a door, in short, and the territory proves it by climbing from a hundred metres on the bank of the Brenta to over fifteen hundred on Monte Asolone. The mid-slope band is crossed by paths that pass among rocky walls and crests that served as natural trenches, beside tunnels and galleries dug into the rock during the First World War. The trade here is stone: the village has a museum devoted to the scapellino, the stonecutter. And on the dolomitic peak of the Bastia, between the territories of Pove and Solagna, one can still make out the traces of the foundations of the old fortifications from which the mountain takes its name.
In the parish church there is a fifteenth-century wooden crucifix about which the sources do not agree: tradition says it was carved in a single night by a Bohemian pilgrim on his way to Rome for the jubilee, while a local legend allows him two days and a night and adds that he got it out of an olive trunk, to give it afterwards to the parish priest in thanks for the hospitality he had received. One way or the other, out of that object came the feasts of the Divin Crocifisso. Down towards the river, instead, stands the little church of San Bartolomeo, built by the Benedictines before the year one thousand at the point where the imperial road towards Germany crossed the one that ran along the foot of the hills; it appears in a diploma of the early tenth century under the name of San Bartolomeo della Nave, was closed to worship in the nineteenth century for decay, was made usable again in 1929, and the flood of 1966 carried away its porch — its frescoes are now in the museum at Bassano. The village's name, finally, appears for the first time in 917, passes through the forms Povedum and Poveo and takes its present shape only in 1577; it is probably a plant name. The words «del Grappa» were added in 1950.
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📅 Every year, on 26 June; the quinquennial Divine Crucifix feasts
Pove del Grappa celebrates Saint Vigilius on 26 June. Every five years, in years ending in 0 or 5, the feasts in honor of the Divine Crucifix are held, a tradition documented since 1797.
Stockfish, milk, oil and anchovies, cooked for hours over the lowest heat: baccalà alla vicentina arrived from Norway with a shipwreck in 1432.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Pove del Grappa, but an easy day trip away.
