History of the Fassa Valley

The origins

In a fresco painted of the palace of the Bishop of Brixen, an old coat-of-arms of the Community of Fassa shows “l Pàster de Fascia” or the shepherd of Fassa. For livestock breeding, especially of sheep, had been a feature of life in Val di Fassa since the earliest times.

The vast high mountain meadows (le mont), offered a wealth of grazing to numerous flocks. They were then taken to spend the winter in the marshland of the Bolzano basin where the people of Val di Fassa claimed ancient grazing rights that they tenaciously defended against any abuse.

The first evidence of human habitation in the valleys of the Dolomites dates back to the Mesolithic (c. 8000-5000 BC) when hunters from settlements in the Po Valley and piedmont area began to cross the alpine passes and the high meadows, which the retreat of the glaciers had opened up, following the tracks of the great wild animals that lived there: red deer, wild boar and, higher up, rock goats and chamois.

The Rhaetians

This was the name that the Roman historians gave to the peoples settled in the alpine region north of Verona and Como. A mysterious people whose origins are obscure (perhaps preIndo-European), the Rhaetians left plentiful traces of their agrarian civilisation from the head of the Rhine to the Adige Valley and from the Inn Valley to the Dolomites.
Archaeologists confirm the existence of one cultural unit in this area from the Second Iron Age (5th century BC) known as the Fritzens-Sanzeno Culture.

Settlements and material evidence of groups of human belonging to the Rhaetian culture have also now been found in abundance in Val di Fassa.

The Rhaetian fortified village at 1550 m a.s.l. on the Col di Pìgui, near Mazzin, is a typical Rhaetian fortified settlement; it is a small village surrounded by a massive defence wall, inside which are houses built from tree trunks.

The Ladin language

The annexation of Rhaetia to the Roman Empire led to the spread of the Latin language among the indigenous population. Vulgar Latin, brought by the Roman soldiers and merchants, underwent a change over the centuries, developing into what is called Rhaeto-Romance or the Ladin language.

There is evidence to suppose that in the past there was a vast area of Ladin culture which stretched from the head of the Rhine to Trieste and from the Danube to lake Garda.

Over the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, huge numbers of migrating people interrupted this continuity in the proto-Ladin area. Towards 600 AD the Alemanni and Bavarians swept down from the north to settle in the various alpine valleys while Slav peoples arrived from the east.

Finally, the conquest of Friuli and the Cadore area by the Venice Republic (15th cent.) led to further erosion of the Ladin-speaking area in favour of Veneto dialects.

Today Ladin is made up of a number of local dialects which together share a sufficient number of features to form one linguistic system.