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Bassano del Grappa

Learn about Bassano del Grappa

A concise introduction to Bassano del Grappa, its geography, history and culture.

Introduction

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Bassano del Grappa stands where the Brenta comes out of the mountains onto the Veneto plain, about an hour by train from Venice. The setting does most of the work: a fast green river, an arcaded medieval centre, and Monte Grappa rising 1,700 metres directly behind the town.

Its symbol is the Ponte degli Alpini, a covered wooden bridge designed by Palladio in 1569 on a crossing documented since 1209. It has been swept away or destroyed repeatedly and rebuilt each time to the same design, most recently after 1945.

The town gives its name to two things you can taste and one you cannot. Grappa is distilled here by families who have done it for centuries -- Nardini, at the bridgehead, has operated since 1779. Ceramics have been made here since the sixteenth century. And Monte Grappa above was one of the decisive battlefields of the First World War, which is why the town added the mountain's name to its own in 1928.

Geography

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Bassano sits at the mouth of the Valsugana, where the Brenta leaves the Alps and enters the plain. That transition is abrupt: the town has mountains immediately behind it and flat farmland immediately in front, and the river runs fast and clear through the middle.

Read the full Geography guide →

History

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A bridging point since at least 1209, Bassano was an Ezzelini stronghold, then Venetian from 1404. Its name changed in 1928 to honour Monte Grappa, where the Italian army held the line through 1917-18 at enormous cost, and the town's identity has carried that ever since.

Read the full History guide →

Culture

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Three things define Bassano culturally: grappa, ceramics and the Alpini. The first two are crafts with unbroken local histories of several centuries; the third is an identity built on the mountain above the town, and it runs deeper here than any tourist would guess.

Read the full Culture guide →

How It Was Built

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The bridge is the town's one piece of world-class engineering, and its interest is that it is deliberately weak: a timber structure designed to give way and be rebuilt, rather than a stone one designed to resist a river that would eventually beat it.

Read the full How It Was Built guide →

Climate Patterns

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Bassano has a humid subtropical climate tempered by the mountains at its back -- warm summers, cold winters, and higher rainfall than the plain because the Prealps lift incoming air. Monte Grappa above has an entirely different, alpine climate.

Read the full Climate Patterns guide →

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