Just a few minutes from the centre of Belluno, on the left side of the Piave, are a number of tiny villages offering superb views of the city and the mountain ranges around it. Rivamaor is a typical village of the Valbelluna, created by the grouping together of a number of courtyards or common areas where farmers and stock raisers used to gather. This model of houses grouped together around a rectangular or square courtyard was somewhere between a single home and a village, and such courtyards became common in the 14th and 15th centuries, with each one home to between twenty and fifty people. In this settlement, which grew up around the confluence of the Cicogna torrent (whose name presumably derives from an instrument with a long neck used to dip into the water) – and the Piave, we can still see many open stone buildings with wooden balconies. Well worth a look is the seventeenth-century oratory of the Santo Nome di Gesù.

From Belluno along the SP1 until San Pellegrino; after the tree-lined avenue following the little church described, near a florist’s, take the local road on the right and follow it for about 2 km.
For those coming from the left of the Piave along the SP1, after the roundabout at Limana, cross the bridge over the Cicogna torrent and follow the signs on the right for Visome; the underpass on the new provincial road links the new road with the one that runs through the village (Via Visome). After about 750 m along the straight, a fork on the left will take you down Via San Daniele, which soon leads to Rivamaor.

ACCESSIBLE: yes
MUNICIPALITY: Belluno
PLACE: Rivamaor
GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES: X 1746710 – Y 5112151
PROVINCE: Belluno

FILE COMPILED BY: Visentin/Vallerani

Along the SP1 that runs from Belluno to Rivamaor are a number of villa complexes, such as San Pellegrino, with its little church that contains the urn with the ashes of the well-known writer from Belluno, Dino Buzzati. The stone portal is topped by a curved tympanum, and the individual “Venetian red” walls culminate with the strip of plastered roan with the characteristic slab-tile roof at the top. The bell tower, probably built later, features a clock, while on the corresponding façade of the church there is a sundial.
A. Alpago Novello defined Villa Buzzati as “the only large, complete example of a mid-19th-century, residence in which architecture and painting appear so closely bound together”.
At the following fork, which leads to Rivamaor, it is also possible to spot the entrance to Villa Alpago, now in a state of abandon: a long, tree-lined avenue, once marked by a large iron gate, leads into the large property, composed of a main L-shaped building and a series of barns grouped around a large courtyard.

M. Vedana, I cortivi di Rivamaor,
C. Vizzutti, L’oratorio del santo Nome di Gesù a Rivamaor di Belluno, Archivio storico di Belluno Feltre e Cadore no. 256, year 1986
G. De Bortoli, A. Moro, F Vizzutti, Belluno, storia, architecture, arte, Belluno, 1984