Zovencedo

Zovencedo sits in the Berici hills, among plateaux, dolines and small valleys, and its land is marked by the masiere, the dry-stone walls with which terraces for vegetable plots and vines were wrung out of the rock; almost all the soft-stone quarries lie in the Gazzo valley. Human presence here is very old: in the Grotta de Nadale a Neanderthal tooth was found, some seventy thousand years old.

In the main village stand the ruins of the castle, part of the curtis of Barbarano granted to the bishops of Vicenza by kings Hugh and Lothair; it does not appear in the diploma of the year one thousand, perhaps because it was still small, but in 1158 Frederick Barbarossa lists it among the possessions of the Vicenza church. Ruined probably in Ezzelino's day, it later housed the commune's hall and, by a deed of 1490, the bishop's residence: a stout tower and some outbuildings remain, and the houses there are built inside the old perimeter. The highest hamlet, San Gottardo, is a curious case: its people are said to have come from Bavaria through the Chiampo valleys — hence the many Maran surnames — and until 1300, according to the Vienna archives, the bishop of Trent sent German-speaking priests to say mass there.