Sorgente del Piave (Val Sesis)

High in Val Sesis, under the rock walls of Monte Peralba, the Piave river begins as a cold alpine spring. For Sappada this is the emblem of the landscape; for Italy it became a remembered river after the First World War, and in 2015 a monument carrying a peace flame was unveiled beside the sources.

Why it matters

The Piave begins as an alpine spring in Val Sesis beneath the Peralba, Chiadenis and Avanza range, then crosses the Venetian plain to the Adriatic. The Sappada Dolomiti tourism site describes the springs as places considered sacred to Italy after the First World War, because the line of the front ran across these mountains and the river became bound up with the national memory of that conflict. The source is both a natural feature and a memorial landscape.

What to notice

The spring emerges in a green valley head enclosed by the rock walls of Monte Peralba, with a stone hut beside the source pool. The valley's alpine ecology includes marmots on the surrounding slopes. The Fiamma della Pace monument, inaugurated on 26 September 2015, is dedicated to the fallen and victims of all wars, especially those of the First World War; the local tourism portal describes it as Italy's second such flame after Montecassino. The landscape combines the river's alpine source with sites associated with the Great War and its remembrance.

Context and history

The valley's meaning was fixed by war. Military works on the mountainsides between the Peralba and Chiadenis remain part of the landscape of the Great War front; the front here separated armies on Alpine summits, and the springs of the Piave, flowing through the battlefields of the Venetian plain, entered patriotic memory as a sacred river. After the centenary context of 2015, the peace flame was brought to the sources through contacts with the Habsburg-Lorraine family — the VisitSappada page names Herta Margarete von Habsburg-Lorraine as president of the institution behind it — an initiative rooted in friendships formed in Cima Sappada during the Second World War and in post-war reconciliation, and explicitly dedicated in that year to the victims of all wars and in particular of 1915–1918. The Fiamma della Pace is a recorded attraction of the destination in its own right, and the small Great War museum in the village keeps the historical thread indoors.