Belluno Culture

Andrea Brustolon is the town's most distinctive claim. Working in Belluno around 1700, he carved furniture in which the supports are figures -- blackamoors, putti, allegories -- doing the structural work. Balzac called him the Michelangelo of wood. The Museo Civico holds the best of it.

Sebastiano Ricci, born here in 1659, became one of the painters who carried the Venetian manner across Europe, working in Vienna, Florence and London.

The food is alpine, not lagoon. Polenta is the base of everything; casunziei (beetroot-filled pasta) came down from the Ladin valleys; the cheeses -- Piave DOP, Schiz -- are the province's own, and game and cured meats do the rest.

Emigration shapes the culture more than any monument. Whole villages left for Brazil, Germany and the United States, and the returning-emigrant story is part of nearly every family here.