Why not spending some days discovering nature and history in Campogrosso?
Campogrosso is a mountain place not far from Recoaro, at the north of Vicenza Province.
This place belongs to my heart and to my childhood memories. Anytime someone told me “we’re going to the mountains“, I always thought about Campogrosso.
When I was I child this place was to me a world made of fields, free cows, flowers and magnificent mountains all around.
Then I grew up and Campogrosso became the place where I went to walk four hours and where I discovered the meaning of the words: effort, history and peace.
Until 1918 Campogrosso was the border between Italy and Austria and here a lot of battles of the First World War took place.
As far as history is concerned, here it is possibile to find many paths that lead walkers through the old trenches of the war. One of this paths starts from Rifugio Campogrosso, a rest-place with some rooms and a good restaurant.
This path is interesting for two reasons:
- first of all, it gives travellers the possibility to touch history with their own hands and understand how terrible it was to spend months and months on trenches and similar places.
- The second reason concerns botanical intestests: here it is possible to find some wild orchids typical of Piccole Dolomiti, the mountains around Campogrosso.
Orchids are not only tropical flowers and some species grow up also on Italian mountains: they normally are little, with spotted leaves and purple. They can be normally found in May.
Campogrosso is also the starting point of many walking routes that lead to the summit of many mountains here around.
My favourite is the one that leads to Rifugio Fraccaroli, about 3 hours of walking paths through different landscapes such as woods, stones and naked mountains.
This area of Veneto is so varied and multiform and it is suitable to all, starting from the one that has nothing to do with mountains and arriving to experienced climbers and walkers. It is the perfect place to discover nature and history of a such peculiar place that is still keeping the discreet charm of an ancient border.
