"Somazea" Area

The artwork depicts, in the foreground, a capercaillie—the largest bird in the Alps alongside the golden eagle—unmistakable for its dark feathers with metallic sheen and its fan-shaped tail, portrayed in the typical semicircular shape of the courtship dance. In the background of the mural is the town where we are located, surmounted at the top by the coat of arms of Auronzo, divided into three distinct sections, each rich in meaning:

• At the top stands the coat of arms of the Magnifica Comunità di Cadore, consisting of two towers (the castles of Pieve and Botestagno) joined by a chain, representing the territory’s ancient feudal union. In the center is a fir tree, which many believe evokes the area’s rich forests, although in the past it was likely a linden tree—the tree under which ancient popular assemblies gathered—thus representing the people coming together to assert their rights.
• In the lower right corner are the colors red and green, historically assigned to the Municipality of Auronzo by the Venetian Republic.
• In the lower left corner is a rooster, the town’s historic symbol. But why did a rooster become the symbol of a mountain town?

Auronzo and Dobbiaco had long been in dispute over the issue of boundaries, and one day the mayors of the two towns decided that the point where two elderly women—one from Auronzo and one from Dobbiaco—would meet after setting out from their respective towns at the crowing of the rooster would become the new border. The evening before the event, the guards from Dobbiaco were supposed to keep an eye on the old woman from Auronzo, while the people from Auronzo were to be in Dobbiaco.

The woman from Auronzo, to pass the time, decided to start knitting until, as the hours went by, the guards from Dobbiaco dozed off. Then, the old woman pricked the rooster with her knitting needles, causing it to crow well before the appointed hour. The guards, startled awake, ordered the old woman to leave; having thus gained a few hours’ head start, she met up with the old woman from Dobbiaco at the Marogna Bridge, near the bottom of the Landro Valley.

It was not, therefore, fate but the cunning of a woman from Auronzo that established the boundaries that remain to this day!