Thanks to its privileged position and its nice climate, Asolo
is a centre of population since the Neolithic period. Seat of the Venetians, it
became an important Roman Municipality in the 1st century B.C., remembered from
Pliny the Elder to Ptolemy. This very old Christian Centre was an episcopal seat
until 969 and then assigned to the Diocese of Treviso, with the official
document of Otho I.
Asolo was subjected to massive destructions during the
barbarian invasions. In the Middle Age, Asolo was ruled by the Ezzelini, the
Scaligeri, the Carraresi, the Trevigiani, and belonged then spontaneously to the
"Serenissima" (The Most Serene Republic) in the first half of the 14th
century. In 1489 Venice invested the Queen of Cipro Caterina Cornaro with the
Seigniory of Asolo, and her splendid reign lasted until 1509.
Writers, italian and foreign poets and artists, brought by the
historical events or attracted by the beauty of this place, visited and loved
this city: from Pietro Bembo who wrote "Gli Asolani" when Asolo was
run by the Queen Cornaro, to Robert Browning who dedicated "Asolando"-
from Giosuè Carducci who called it "la Città dai cento orizzonti"
(the Town of a hundred horizons), to Ada Negri, from Lorenzo Lotto and Giorgione
whose masterpieces reveal the charm of the landscape which surrounds Asolo, to
Palladio, to Massari, to Canova, until Benson, Marius Pictor, De Pisis, from
Gustavo Modena to Eleonora Duse who lived in Asolo and wanted to be buried
there; from Igor Strawinsky to Gian Francesco Malipier
