TABLE 1

MOSSON

The rediscovery
Montagne e Solidarietà APS has returned the Antica Strada del Costo to local memory and to posterity. The intervention was born in the Escursioni Storico Umanitarie group, from the intuition of the mountaineer Tarcisio Bellò, from research on site and in the archives with Giorgio Spiller, Omero Capraro and Valter Fabris. The volunteers identified and brought the ancient road back to light also with the help of African refugees. An artifact with an ancient flavor and knowledge of 16 kilometers re-emerged from long oblivion, telling the story of an entire territory.
The association, ensuring its maintenance, promoted the regional registration as Sentiero CAI 666, together with the CAI Vicenza. The recovery took six years (5240 hours of work between 2018 and 2024) and 13,540 euros from various sponsors.
The Antica Strada del Costo received the GoSlow 2020 National Award and the mention “Recovery model of an ancient road” at the General States of Outdoor Tourism 2024. A grandiose human work that for the volume of stones moved is comparable to the Verona Arena. We should all enhance it and maintain it over time.

General profile and first section
The Antica Strada del Costo was the shortest route between Veicetia, Vicenza, and Nemus Asillagi, Asiago. From Thiene the “Via del Costo” still exits north today, at the “contra Costo” of Chiuppano on the banks of the Astico. With a ford or a bridge it went to Caltrano; parading through “the valley and road of the Senador”, the Lombard church of San Giorgio, led to Mosson, a hamlet of Cogollo, 305 m above sea level.
In Mosson, mentioned in 983 AD, there is the church of San Gaetano and the older church of Santa Cecilia. From here the mountain section of the Antica Strada del Costo, CAI path 666, takes the lane between the seventeenth-century Villa Zuccollo and the Osteria del Pelado, an old post office with horses.
With a long diagonal it ascends the side of the mountain, with a few hairpin bends, original sections of paved roadbed and ballast upstream and downstream to stabilize the road surface. After Bramonte it crosses the historic Rocchette Asiago rack railway, built in 1908-1909.

Historical attestations
1832 in the Austrian land registry, above Campiello, there is the wording “Strada detta del Costo che va ad Asiago”; then of municipal road “detta del Zovo” or “da Roncalto a Cesuna”.
1798-1805 Anton von Zach in the Kriegskarte defined it: <<A pedestrian road 5 steps wide… from Asiago crosses Cesuna, turns into an equestrian road, goes to Campiello… Cogollo and Valle dell’Astico. Almost unusable if it rains continuously… because near the Contrada della Coda it is very soft… due to the water that comes down from the mountains.>>
1809-1816 the Napoleonic Notice maps indicate “Strada del Costo” and “Capitello del Costo”.
1608-1620 the maps Giandomenico dell’Acqua, Filippo Pigafetta, Giovanni and Domenico Molino report the ancient road that, on the map G. Molino and another contemporary one has a complete development.
1598 in the “Relation of the Vicenza Alps” Count Francesco Caldogno, border inspector for the Serenissima, said that <<…he received a letter from the Rectors of Vicenza… while I was descending into the Canaglia valley.>> (Bertoliana Library, ms 595 pp 203-205).
1524 Contarina sentence <<…the Canaglia road, locally called Campielo…>>
1204 Rotzo boundary act, a sixteenth-century forgery that is nevertheless important, in which the ancient Val di Maso road would act as the border between Cogollo and Rotzo, now Roana.