A Missile Base Turns into a Peace Park

The Pizzoc is a mountain in the Treviso Pre-Alps. It is 1,565 metres high (5134 feet), one of the highest points in Treviso Province in the Veneto Region of northern Italy.

It’s what I would call a mountain for the lazy (useful if one has an aged parent in tow) as its top can be reached by a hair-raising but stunningly beautiful road.

We visited the Pizzoc earlier this month when Autumn tints were beginning to show their full beauty. The majesty of leaf colours was a wonder to behold.

On the top of the Pizzoc (etymologically “Spizt Hoch”, “high peak” in the Cymbric language spoken by the teutonically descended forresters who still live locally in their own villages there) is the Piazza della Pace (peace square), used as a viewpoint and marked by a cross and an altar.

Here, from 1962, during the period of the Cold War, a missile radar base was established in connection with the launch base located nearby. Operationally closed in July 1977, it was definitively abandoned on August 21st, 1979.

The ex-base site is an excellent vantage point from which to view the Alpago mountains, the lakes of Revine and Santa Croce and the dolomitic Col Visentin-Monte Cesen ridge.

On clear days the view ranges from the Gulf of Trieste to the Euganean Hills and the Venetian Lagoon.

Although a bright blue day our view was not of the clearest. It was still wonderful to be there, however. Even at this height it was hot enough to be wearing a T-shirt.

It’s sad how many beautiful places in the world are disfigured by military establishments. I think of Salisbury plain, for example, and certain areas of the Dorset coast.

Paradoxically, however, the exclusion of the public has preserved nature in these places meant for defence and destruction.

I think also of another missile-tracking radar station, that established on Britain’s remotest island, St Kilda, now belonging to the National Trust for Scotland and unpopulated on a permanent basis since 1930. We were fortunate enough to be on a SNT work party last century and it was truly difficult to believe that this wildest and loneliest of places was used for a weapon that, in the wrong hands, could spell the end of life as we know it on our blue planet.

Here are some photos from that unforgettable time of our lives.