Salcedo
Salcedo is a small municipality in the province of Vicenza, with just under a thousand inhabitants, set in an elevated hillside po...
Updated 12 July 2026
The story
The story of Salcedo
A panoramic position between plain and hills
The territory of Salcedo extends in an elevated position above the Vicenza plain, which can be admired from up high on clear days, before descending through small plateaus and gentle hills toward the neighbouring municipality of Breganze. It is a typical foothill landscape of the upper Vicenza area, made up of vineyards, tree rows and small settlements scattered across the territory, in a hinge zone between the mountains of the Asiago plateau and the cultivated plain below. No major roads cut through the village, which retains a close-knit, rural character, appreciated above all by those seeking scenic routes away from the traffic of nearby towns.
The name and its early medieval origins
The name Salcedo probably derives from the Latin 'salicetum', meaning willow grove, on the same model by which 'roveretum' indicates an oak wood: an origin tied to the spontaneous vegetation that once characterised the territory. The village appears in medieval documents as early as the 13th century, in the form Salzedum, cited in acts of 1253 and 1294, while a 1434 will refers to it as 'Salcedum pertinenza di Perlena'. These records testify to a continuity of settlement spanning almost eight centuries, rarely documented with such precision in the small municipalities of the area.
The early medieval link with the Asiago plateau
Salcedo's most curious historical chapter dates to the 10th century: between 917 and 921 Emperor Berengar donated to Bishop Sibicone of Padua the entire territory between the left bank of the Astico and the right bank of the Brenta, thereby including, in the same act, both Salcedo and the whole Altopiano dei Sette Comuni. Today the two places have very different histories, economies and tourist identities, but that early medieval donation is a reminder that, at their origins, the territory between the Astico and Brenta valleys was administered as a single ecclesiastical entity, before the later municipal fragmentation that shaped today's map of the Vicenza area.
Mure, the First World War and Palazzo Cantele
In 1889 the hamlet of Mure separated from Salcedo to become an independent municipality, marking one of the most recent redefinitions of local boundaries in the area. During the First World War Salcedo hosted Italian and Allied troops, with engineering units stationed in the main village and a powder magazine at Montemaggiore; in 1917 Palazzo Cantele was turned into a small hospital, transferred here from the military post at Granezza, on the Asiago plateau. These episodes place Salcedo, like many foothill municipalities of the Vicenza area, within the dense network of rear areas and outposts that supported the front during the conflict, without the village ever being the direct scene of battle.
Rural life today
Today Salcedo remains a municipality largely oriented toward agriculture and residential life, with an economy tied to vine growing and small-scale foothill community life, in a context similar to that of many neighbouring villages in the hilly belt between Bassano and Vicenza. There are no large tourist facilities or organised visitor flows: those who come to Salcedo tend to do so for the landscape, for a bike ride among the hills, or for the quiet of a village far from the more crowded centres, rather than to visit specific monuments.
Experiences not to miss
- Take in the view over the Vicenza plain from the village's highest points
- Follow by bike or on foot the hills toward Breganze
- Discover Palazzo Cantele and its history linked to the First World War
- Visit nearby Mure, once a hamlet of Salcedo and today an independent municipality
To see
What to see in Salcedo
Routes · Trovido Route
