Feltre Culture

The painted facades are the town's identity. Sixteenth-century house fronts along Via Mezzaterra and around Piazza Maggiore carry frescoes -- figures, friezes, illusionistic architecture -- and enough survives to reconstruct what the whole street once looked like. Almost nowhere else in the Veneto retains this much.

Vittorino da Feltre is the town's contribution to European history. His school at Mantua from 1423 taught the Gonzaga children alongside poor scholars he supported himself, used games and physical exercise as part of the curriculum, and did not beat its pupils -- radical in the fifteenth century and not universal now.

The Teatro de la Sena, completed in 1802 on the model of Venice's La Fenice, is one of the best-preserved small theatres of its date in Italy, with the original horseshoe of boxes intact.

Food is mountain Veneto -- polenta, cheeses from the Vette, game, and formai frant from the high pastures -- and the Birreria Pedavena, brewing since 1897, is the valley's own beer.