Ceneda

Ceneda stands among the hills of the Veneto, near the northern approaches to the plain. Its neighbour Serravalle guarded a narrow route through the hills, but the two were distinct communities in the age of bishops and Venetian rule.

Ceneda was the seat of a bishopric and, from the early medieval period, its bishops also held temporal authority as counts. In 1388 the town came under Venice, yet the bishops resisted the republic’s full authority over their county for centuries. Venice finally suppressed the county in 1768. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction and secular lordship thus overlapped around the cathedral and the bishop’s residence, linking the town’s history to both Rome and the politics of the Venetian mainland.