Porte del Pasubio is a gap, a pass. During the war, it was right behind the frontlines and a small town was built there. It appeared out of nowhere to soldiers walking the Road of Tunnels, right above them. It was a jumble of shacks clinging to the rock. The many photos we’ve found and collected, largely unreleased, have been taken by those who were there. They tell us about the war, of course, but perhaps they also tell us about the need each soldier felt for something like home or a hometown. They also talk to us, though it’s difficult to imagine in times of war, about a deep sense of belonging.
This is the sentiment explored by the exhibition, the energy needed to take ownership of what was originally just a rugged, inhospitable and abandoned corner of a mountain and make it into a real place.
Once the war was over, it was in this small town that Schio’s CAI would build its mountain lodge, right on top of soldiers’ shacks. It was a strongly symbolic choice by which Mount Pasubio was adopted by the city and the towns in the valleys.
Inaugurated in 1922, the lodge was called Pasubio. Expanded again and again in the following years, it’s now called Papa.
It’s a long story, also told in the exhibition. Another topic is the discovery of the mountain. Because, before the war, hardly anyone went up there, it was the war that opened the mountain up.
On one side, for three years roads and trails were built to serve the front, the same trails which now make access to every area possible. On the other, the mountain had entered the life of millions of soldiers and the collective imagination. Places previously unknown became suddenly common place. And people wanted to see them, to understand.
So, Porte del Pasubio, the intersection of almost all the roads and trails that take to the top of the mountain from the Vicenza side, became, along with the Lodge, the reference point of every excursion: destination, meeting point, starting point, all at the same time.
It is, essentially, a crossroads of stories.