ODERZO (Opitergium). - Ancient diocese of the patriarchate of Aquileia, today in the diocese of Ceneda, now called Vittorio Veneto. A city of the Veneto Euganeo, province of Treviso, 16 m. above sea level, on the right bank of the Monticano river. The commune has a population of 17,000 inhabitants, the capital of 7000: agriculture is most flourishing and the production of wheat and silkworm cocoons is rich; a railway line connects it to Treviso-Portogruaro.
Of pre-Roman origin, O. settled on a slight quadrangular terrace, soon becoming an important center on the route of the Via Postumia; in 88 B.C. it was a Roman colony and then a municipium belonging to the Papiria tribe; around 44 B.C. it was rebuilt by Caesar after its destruction by the Pompeians (49). A vital road junction, during the imperial era it was destroyed by the Quadi and Marcomanni (169 A.D.), suffered grave damage because of the barbarian invasions, so that considerable groups of inhabitants, particularly during Attila's sack and the Lombard occupation, transferred their residence to the lagoons, giving origin to Eraclea.
Christianity penetrated relatively late, as in the other centers of "Venetia et Histria"; in all likelihood (paleochristian epigraph of Sabiniana, bishop Epodius of the early 5th century), it was well organized in the second half of the 4th century, when the episcopal see was established, which, after Marcian, continued until the 7th century.
In 667 Grimoald destroyed O. and divided its territory among Friuli, Treviso and Ceneda. From this moment Ceneda, which was the center of a duchy, probably became an episcopal see, while O., after a period of abandonment, slowly recovered to flourish again in the best times of the Venetian Republic.
Art. - The civic Museum, arranged in rooms of the Town Hall, collects monuments and furnishings of the Roman era, a fair collection of medals of the imperial period, capitals, columns, examples of funerary sculpture with good portraits; the mosaic floor carpets in black and white, and particularly others with hunting scenes (end of the 2nd century A.D.), are wonderful in life and movement, harmonious in color in a vivid range of impressionistic taste. Other mosaics with remains of a Roman house have recently reappeared (1951) through the work of the "Associazione amici di Opitergium"; an association that aims to reconstruct the history and topography of the ancient city through systematic excavations. From the Renaissance are some porticoed houses, frescoed, which give O. a characteristic appearance, creating in the main square a picturesque and monumental zone. The fifteenth-century Cathedral, recently restored, with a single nave of ample spatial breath and with a raised three-arched apse zone and agile dome, rises on previous paleochristian and medieval constructions, has frescoed walls (15th century) and preserves a Roman mosaic carpet with scroll borders, reused in the presbytery, paintings by Palma il Giovane, by Pomponio Amalteo (organ doors), by Bellunello (Madonna), bas-reliefs with the Virgin on a cathedra and in a tabernacle (Venetian art of the 14th century of the school of De Sanctis and with Pisan influences).
Bibliography6 works
Paolo Lino Zovatto