A Glance at Old Perarolo

The river port of Perarolo was the most northerly port on the river Piave.  Here the waters of the Piave and the Boite, a major tributary, joined so as to provide enough depth of water to support commercial rafting.  After walking through the night upstream along the right bank of the Piave from Codissago, the zattieri di Codissago would arrive at Perarolo at daybreak to begin the construction of rafts.

When commercial rafting was at its height

 Colour tinted photo from an old postcard

The photograph above shows massive quantities of timber stacked along the right bank of the Piave at Perarolo.  Water, taken from the Boite river, was conveyed through a narrow channel (centre bottom of picture) to power the mills (a sawmill and a flourmill) at the southern end of the village.  Timber was also floated to the sawmills along this channel.  It was in this region - the southern end of Perarolo - that the rafts were assembled.

The church and campanile (close by the bridge) are not the same as those described in The Door of Perarolo.  A huge landslide blocked the course of the Boite River in 1823, forming  a natural dam.  The water pressure built up behind the frana blocking the Boite until it was sufficient to rupture the dam and sweep the frana away, and with it also a significant part of Perarolo.  Fortunately, the villagers, seeing the Boite riverbed dry, had sufficient warning to evacuate the population to higher ground.  The church was rebuilt in 1863 on a new site - by the bridge - but suffered further flood damage in 1882.  More problems with earthquakes and subsidence followed, and only the choir of the old church survives to the present day.  In 1906 the aisle and façade were reconstructed in wood under the direction of the Belluno master builder Luigi Croce, whilst in the same year the old campanile was demolished and replaced by the wooden one seen in the photograph in the post ‘Links to Maps’ of 25/09/13. 

Map showing the site of the cìdolo  at Sacco

Carte e Pianta Turistiche Tobacco sheet 16

After the Austrian re-occupation of Venetia a new road, the Cavallera was built to link Vienna with Venice through the Piave valley.  It leads north out of Perarolo, zigzagging up the mountainside below Damos.  If you look at the map, you can see at the first sharp bend of the Cavallera, a road leading down to the right bank of the Piave at Sacco.

The cìdolo at Sacco

Here was sited il cìdolo, a kind of covered doorway or portcullis in the river.  Men worked inside the cìdolo sorting the logs for the sawmills of the Piave valley.

The church of Sant’Anna

Photograph © Sally Givertz 2012

The tiny church of Sant’Anna, marked in the bottom left-hand corner of the map above.  The church dates from 1580.  I have added a link under 'useful links' to the Comunità Montagna Centro Cadore website, which gives more details about the church and Perarolo in general.

Finally… a personal announcement.  Sally, my editor, and I were married on the 27^th September in a small ceremony at the registry office in Banff, a few miles from Gardenstown (known as ‘Gamrie’ to locals)where we live.  Sally has photos and more – if you would like to view please follow the link ‘My editor’s blog’ to the right of this post.

Note: This blog supports readers of The Door of Perarolo, a historical novel set in Cadore, Italy in the early nineteenth century.  You may examine feedback from readers in the UK here and in the US here.  The Door of Perarolo is a Kindle ebook comprising 140 chapters.  It can be downloaded from Amazon sites worldwide.  The launch post of this blog gives further details.  The second post provides links to maps, etc.

Vauluisant Abbey

Vauluisant Abbey was founded in 1127 by Cistercian monks in the forests of the Alain valley.  The river Alain flows south past Vauluisant to join with the waters of the Vanne, a tributary of the Yonne, the broad stately river that flows through Sens.

Map showing the location of Vauluisant Abbey in Yonne

The abbey provided work for foresters, and as a young man Xavier Fortin, himself a forester’s son, worked in the woods surrounding Vauluisant Abbey.  

Letellier de Louvois’ 1692 plan of Vauluisant Abbey

The Alain provided water for the fish farm (to the right of the plan above).  A dovecote (the tower to the left) with a rotating cone of ladders at its centre allowed the monks to collect eggs for the kitchen.  Also to be found within the grounds were orchards and vegetable gardens.  Before Fortin’s arrival at the abbey the monks there, over the centuries, had enjoyed periods of expansion and prosperity, these interrupted by attacks on the abbey – notably during the religious wars of the 16^th C, when the buildings were looted on several occasions.   During the Revolution, the monks were thrown out of the abbey, the latter becoming a vast demolition site.

Vauluisant in present times

Photograph © Peter Alexander Gray 2009

Much restoration has taken place since those times.  I would like very much to express my gratitude to Madame Demoulin, the present owner, and her wonderful team of guides, for giving me a private tour of the grounds and buildings of Vauluisant Abbey during my visit there in 2009.

Note: This blog supports readers of The Door of Perarolo, a historical novel set in Cadore, Italy in the early nineteenth century.  You may examine feedback from readers in the UK here and in the US here.  The Door of Perarolo is a Kindle ebook comprising 140 chapters.  It can be downloaded from Amazon sites worldwide.  The launch post of this blog gives further details.  The second post provides links to maps, etc.

Xavier Fortin

Le Grand Cerf (left of picture), in the Rue de Lyon, Sens.

The main protagonist of The Door of Perarolo is a Frenchman, Xavier Fortin.  Fortin’s father was a forester, who died in Xavier’s infancy.  Shortly afterwards the surviving members of the family, Mama, Lucien and Xavier, moved to Sens (in the district of Yonne).  His mother worked in the kitchen of a coaching inn there, Le Grand Cerf.  The photograph (above) of the Rue de Lyon was taken around the end of the 19^th C.  A low wall is visible at the bottom left hand corner of the image.  Its function was to prevent people (possibly having had too much hospitality during an evening spent in Le Grand Cerf) falling into the waters of the abreuvoir on the far side.  The latter was a place for the watering of coach horses arriving at the inn.  On the opposite side of the street was La Bouteille, another inn (a man wearing a white apron stands in the entrance).  It is interesting to speculate what they might be thinking.  Did they know by that time that the coming of the railways would cause the demise of the old coaching inns?

Elephants from a circus passing through Sens watering in the abreuvoir.

The abreuvoir close by Le Grand Cerf (left).  I owe a debt of gratitude to Bernard Brouse of the Société Archéologique de Sens for assisting me in locating Le Grand Cerf, and I am grateful also for his subsequent kindness in sending me French newspaper cuttings relating to the inn when it was still functional. 

Looking into Sens from Le Grand Cerf

Photograph © Peter Alexander Gray 2009

Today the abreuvoir has been filled in.  This is the view looking into the beautiful city of Sens, seen from the spot where it was sited, outside Le Grand Cerf,.  The old town walls that were there in Fortin’s time have, like the abreuvoir, gone, though some of the buildings from the period remain.  A small plaque can be seen above the top window of the building on the right.   It shows evidence of the passage of Russian troops and cavalry through Sens en route to Paris.

Cossack bullet marks from February 1814.

Photograph © Peter Alexander Gray 2009

Le Grand Cerf still stands, but in modern times has been converted into apartments.  The Rue de Lyon has been renamed the Rue du Général de Gaulle.

Note: This blog supports readers of The Door of Perarolo, a historical novel set in Cadore, Italy in the early nineteenth century.  You may examine feedback from readers in the UK here and in the US here.  The Door of Perarolo is a Kindle ebook comprising 140 chapters.  It can be downloaded from Amazon sites worldwide.  The launch post of this blog gives further details.  The second post provides links to maps, etc.

Links to Maps

Links to Maps and Itineraries

The church of San Nicolò and the Campanile in Perarolo as it exists today

Hi – I’d like to direct you in this post to some beautifully presented web pages designed by Pierluigi Artico.  As well as presenting much interesting information concerning the Veneto region (Venetia in the 19^th C) there are some lovely maps to view.  When writing my book The Door of Perarolo I took the decision not to include maps.  Instead I opted to let Fortin and his horse Éclair take the reader with them on their journey from Venice up the Piave valley to Longarone.  Hopefully, the reader builds up a mental map as a result of following this journey.

If you click on ‘Maps and Itineraries’ under Useful links on this blog and follow link No 6 you will see that the Piave River flows into the Adriatic north of Venice.  The section to river between San Donà and Cortellazzo is called the ‘new’ Piave.  The course of the river Piave (Fiume Piave in Italian – hence F. Piave on maps) was diverted centuries ago to reduce the depositing of silt in the lagoon around Venice.  The old course of the river is the Piave Vecchia, marked as such on the map.  In chapter 2 of the book, Fortin leaves Éclair at Musile (a place for the stabling of animals, nowadays absorbed into the modern city of San Donà) and travels to Venice (Venezia) via the Piave Vecchia.

Looking further north up the Piave valley (Map 5) you can find Nervesa (where the opening scenes of the book are set).  Further north still (Map 4) we can see Quero, Feltre and Belluno.  Capo di Ponte (a place name that occurs several times in the book) nowadays is called Ponte nelli Alpi (Map 3).  Map 2 takes us further north to Longarone, Codissago and Castello Lavazzo (nowadays Castellavazzo).  Map 1 takes us to Perarolo and, further north still, Auronzo. 

That's enough travelling for one post!  I'll write more in the next...

Note: This blog supports readers of The Door of Perarolo, a historical novel set in Cadore, Italy in the early nineteenth century.  You may examine feedback from readers in the UK here and in the US here.  The Door of Perarolo is a Kindle ebook comprising 140 chapters.  It can be downloaded from Amazon sites worldwide.  The launch post of this blog gives further details.

Launch of The Door of Perarolo on Kindle

This is a big portmanteau of a novel stuffed with history and adventure; humour and romance. It is set in Europe between 1810 and 1813 in French-occupied northern Italy, Austria and France.

Xavier Fortin, a young French forester, is sent to Italy and travels along the Piave valley to Longarone where there is a small French garrison.  Fortin is a civilian caught up in momentous events and he has no way of knowing just how much his life is about to change. France plans to rebuild its shattered navy and urgently needs timber for masts.  As Venice is under British blockade a most secret plan is devised for the smuggling of the masts along the river systems of Northern Italy; their final destination being the great shipyard at Toulon in Southern France.  The plan is the brainchild of a French naval engineer based in Venice, a hotbed of plotting, intrigue and unrest. 

In Vienna, Maria, the scheming wife of the feeble Austrian Kaiser, Francis, loathes the French who have taken the southern provinces of the Austrian Empire from them. Maria, from Modena in Italy, pulls the strings behind the scenes whenever the generals meet in Vienna in order to hasten the day when Northern Italy is part of the restored Austrian Empire.

But not all matters in Vienna are concerned with war and politics.  At the family home in Gumpendorfer Strasse, Karl Reithoffer is swotting for entry to the University.  Unknown to Karl his father has other plans relating to his son’s future career; should war break out again between Austria and France, the young man will be bought a commission in the army and become the pride of the family…

Note: This blog supports readers of The Door of Perarolo, a historical novel set in Cadore, Italy in the early nineteenth century.  You may examine feedback from readers in the UK here and in the US here.  The Door of Perarolo is a Kindle ebook comprising 140 chapters.  It can be downloaded from Amazon sites worldwide.  The second post of this blog provides links to maps, etc.