Feltre historical timeline

Origins

Feltria was a Roman municipium on the road through the Alps, and the ridge was fortified long before. It became a bishopric with authority over the surrounding valleys.

Turning points

The town submitted to Venice in 1404. Then, in 1510, during the War of the League of Cambrai, troops of the Emperor Maximilian I sacked and burned it. The destruction was close to total.

Influential people

Vittorino da Feltre, born here around 1378, opened a school at Mantua in 1423 -- the Casa Giocosa -- teaching rich and poor together, using physical exercise and play, and refusing corporal punishment. It shaped humanist education across Europe.

Cultural evolution

Venice financed the rebuilding through the sixteenth century, and the merchant families who returned frescoed their new facades. That single reconstruction is why the upper town has the coherence it does.

Present-day significance

The Palio di Feltre, held on the first Sunday of August, commemorates the town's return to Venetian rule in 1404 with a horse race and quarter competitions -- a nineteenth-century revival of a much older event, and now the town's biggest day.