How Was Valdobbiadene Built

The ciglioni are the landscape's real architecture. On slopes of thirty degrees and more, growers cut narrow level strips and let grass bind the earth face between them, rather than building stone retaining walls as they would in Liguria or the Douro. It is cheaper and it works, but it needs continual repair and it can only be maintained by hand.

The consequence is economic as much as visual: a hectare of ciglioni takes several times the labour of flat vineyard, which is why these wines cost what they do and why abandonment is the standing threat.

The hamlets -- San Pietro di Barbozza, Santo Stefano, Saccol -- are built along the contour rather than on it, strung out on the few level shelves, with cellars cut back into the hill behind the houses.

In the town, the Villa dei Cedri is the one piece of formal architecture: a nineteenth-century villa in a cedar park, now municipal, and a reminder of the landowning class that preceded the smallholders.