Borgo Valsugana

Borgo Valsugana sits on the Brenta, thirty kilometres east of Trento, in the lower part of the Valsugana valley that carries the road and the railway between Trento and the Veneto plain. The Roman settlement of Ausugum stood on the same site, on the Claudia Augusta Altinate road from Altino to Tridentum, which set the town on a route between the plain and the mountains long before the present centre took shape. The centro storico straddles the Brenta, arcades opening onto the quays on each bank, which is why locals and visitor guides call it the Little Venice of Trentino.

The castle above the town looks down on this river centre, and the side valley to the west holds the art project among the meadows, so the town reads in three layers: the water level where the old houses face each other across the river, the height of the watchtower on the hill, and the separate, quieter valley given over to the works in natural materials. The valley was the front line in 1915 to 1916 and much of the historic centre was rebuilt after the war, so the painted facades standing over the water today are largely a twentieth-century reconstruction of a much older river town.