Asiago Geography

The Altopiano di Asiago, or Altopiano dei Sette Comuni, is a broad limestone plateau in the southern pre-Alps, bounded by the Astico valley to the west, the Brenta to the east, and the Val d'Assa cutting through it.

The plateau surface sits mostly between 1,000 and 1,400 metres, an unusually flat and open upland, with the town of Asiago in a shallow basin at its centre. It rises northward to a rim of peaks -- Monte Ortigara, Cima Dodici and Monte Portule -- above 2,000 metres, which mark the boundary with Trentino.

The rock is karstic limestone: water disappears underground rather than running off, so the plateau has almost no surface streams but extensive cave systems, sinkholes and dry valleys. This is why the historic settlements depended on cisterns.

The vegetation is spruce forest on the slopes and open meadow and pasture across the plateau floor -- a landscape maintained by centuries of grazing and mowing, and the basis of the cheese.

To the south the plateau breaks off abruptly, dropping some 800 metres to the Venetian plain in a single escarpment.