Feltre

Feltre (ˈfeltre; Fèltre) is a town and comune of the province of Belluno in Veneto, northern Italy. A hill town in the southern reaches of the province, it is located on the Stizzon River, about from its junction with the Piave, and southwest from Belluno. The Dolomites loom to the north of the town. An area incorporating Feltre and 12 contiguous municipalities is known as it. In 2014, the Feltrino area was formalised in the Unione Montana Feltrina (Feltrino Mountain Community). It was known in Roman times as Feltria and described as an oppidum by Pliny, who assigned its foundation to the Alpine tribe of the Rhaetians. The city obtained the status of municipium in 49 BC with its citizens inscribed into the Roman tribe of Menenia. In spite of its rigorous climate, which led a Roman author, perhaps Caesar, to write: Feltria perpetuo niveum damnata rigore Atque mihi posthac haud adeunda, vale Feltria lay on a Roman road mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as passing from Opitergium (Oderzo) through Feltria to Tridentum (Trento). After the fall of the Western Empire, under which it had developed into a flourishing city, it became a Lombard dominion. Later in the Middle Ages, it was ruled by Ezzelino III da Romano, by the Camino family, and then by the Scaligeri of Verona, from 1315 to 1337. Feltre was subsequently under Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, the da Carrara and the Visconti until 1404, when, together with Belluno, it was conquered by the Republic of Venice. In 1499 it received a new line of walls. In 1509 the center of the town was mostly destroyed during battles between the Venetians and the League of Cambrai, and later rebuilt with a characteristic 16th-century style. In 1797, after the capitulation of Venice to Napoleon, it was ruled for some time by the French. Napoleon made his minister of war, Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke, Duke of Feltre in 1807. After the Congress of Vienna (1814), Feltre was assigned to the Austrian Empire, to which it remained until it was joined to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.