Zugliano

The name of Zugliano comes from the Latin Iulianum, the farm of Julius, and the first time it appears in writing is in 983, inside the Privilegium by which bishop Rodolfo of Vicenza assigned large properties to the Benedictines of San Felice: in Zullano caxale. Before that the Veneti and the Romans had passed through, and the Lombards left a small necropolis with about ten warriors buried together with their military kit. In 917 the emperor Berengar had given the bishop of Padua all the land between the Astico and the Brenta with one precise obligation: to build castles against the Hungarian raids. It is almost certain that the castle of Zugliano was born from that, around the church of San Zeno, high up and safe, while the pieve of Santa Maria stayed down on the plain, exposed.

That castle then disappeared, and not because of a war. From the thirteenth century onwards deeds place it beside the church of San Zeno; on 17 August 1494 a vicinia was still being held on the castle itself, and a deed of 1601 still uses that name. No siege, no destruction: it probably went piece by piece, when the church was rebuilt or when Villa Giusti was raised below it, or else slowly, as the village shifted along the road. What remains is the place name Castello and, a little to the north, a via Castelletto that would suggest another fortification, of which however no trace exists in any document.