Schio

Schio means oaks: from the medieval Latin scledum, the wood of ischi. The oaks are gone, but the mountain above the town has stayed extraordinary: Monte Summano is considered a unique floristic heritage in Europe, with about a thousand different species on one small height — more than thirty per cent of the flora of the Veneto, fifteen per cent of Italy's and more than seven per cent of all Europe's. Below, the town went into quite another trade: they called it the Manchester of Italy.

The Lanificio Rossi, founded in 1817, became under Alessandro Rossi the largest textile firm in Italy, and the Fabbrica Alta of 1862 — a five-storey cathedral of brick, designed by the Belgian Auguste Vivroux — still dominates the town's skyline. Rossi did not stop at sheds: he built a model workers' quarter, the nursery school of 1872, the Jacquard garden and theatre, and on the edge of town stands the hydroelectric station of Molino di Poleo, of 1889, the oldest in the Veneto. It is an industrial-archaeology heritage visited the way castles are visited elsewhere. The neoclassical duomo climbs its monumental stair; the Piccole Dolomiti behind open the paths and the road of the fifty-two tunnels of the Pasubio.