Valcellina′s historical emigration and piedmont′s terrazzo workers

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In 1565 Jacopo Valvasone from Maniago observed that the Carnian populations "make various trades with the Germans and, as hard working people, they leave their country in great numbers and go earn a living in far away lands so that they can now be found throughout Europe. Their art is weaving wool clothes, but linen is more frequently used. In this specialty, they are excellent and unusual."

The "traditional" emigrations moved people from the Friuli mountains mainly towards Carinthia, Styria, Salzburg, Bavaria and Istria.

Other countries of the Danube basin, certain sites of the Veneto plains, Trieste and Venice represent frequent and recurring destinations.

Around the first decades of the year 500, even before Jacopo Valvasone wrote his "Descrittione della Cargna nel Friuli", the peddlers from Claut, Erto and Cimolais earned their board selling spruce wood rods impregnated with resin (lum).

A steady coming and going, during the winter months, moved the mountaineers towards the planes but did not jeopardize the work in the fields.

It was done by the women who remained at home.
Venice, the lower Friuli, the areas of Treviso and Vicenza and then Trieste and Istria became the most frequent migratory destinations starting in the 1600s and intensified throughout the following centuries influenced by conditions, times and itineraries that varied from one country to another.

The first testimony of a trade emigration that is not necessarily included in the narrow span of an occasional individual is found in western Friuli thanks to the piedmont's terrazzo workers. The presence in the lagoon city is therefore consolidated throughout the 1600s and the 1700s.

The Friuli people were able to draw attention to themselves due to their language and their manner in the Castello and Dorsoduro Sestrieri, in Campo e Fondamenta dei Furlani, in Campiello delle Furlane and in Fondamenta e Corte delle Furlane.