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The mountains

Le Prealpi vicentine (piana di Marcesina) con le sue risorse di pascoli, boschi e pietra da costruzione

The flat Po Valley clashes against big mountains in the north. At first there are hills that go back to the Quaternary Period (between 75.000 and 15.000 years ago: Garda hills, Cogollo del Cengio, Quero, Vittorio Veneto; Vicentinan piedmont, Asolo hills and Valcavasia, Montello, Conegliano and Vittorio Veneto hills). This line offers gentle reliefs ( around 100 and 500 m) within rich of water, and these are strategic points from where it is easier to watch over the plains and the following area of the Veneto Peralps. This area is quite homogeneous from the Garda Lake to the borders with Friuli and shows many higher mountains such as the Eastern Garda, Monti Lessini, Asiago plateau, Acrocoro del Grappa, Prealpis of Belluno, Cansiglio plateau. These mountains have their origins in the Lower Jurasic (210 millions ago) until the Cenozoic Era (50 millions years ago). These reliefs are of limestone rock, with no superficial water, but within rich of pastures and woods between 800 m and 2000 m.

Un tipico contesto alpino veneto segnato dall’incisione valliva del Piave

The Alps are in the extreme northern part of the region. The higher peaks are of dolomite, a type of carbonate rock that creates the characteristic shape and colour of these mountains. The other reliefs are of sandstone, conglomerate and marlstone and they go back to 240-210 years ago. Here the landscape is more impervious because of the erosions and reshaping produced by water and glacial ages. Often the peaks, perpetually covered in snow, exceed 3000 m.