The Vajont Dam and the Battle of Vittorio Veneto: Lessons for Today

Vajont Dam ~ Musem of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto ~ Beyond the Visit ~ Photos

   

Left: View from parking area toward Vajont dam with Schiara Group in background.

Center left: The shell like form of the dam from where the control room used to be.

Center right: Entrance to the Museum of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.

Right: Casa Fighera (Porta San Giovanni) - Serravalle Vittorio Veneto - with bullet marks from WWI.

Vajont Dam

It’s probably not on the top 10 list of the average visitor to Italy or even the top 100 for that matter, but sooner or later if you stay in Italy for any length of time, you’ll hear about the Vajont Dam and the infamous disaster associated with it, and then you’ll want to visit it. It’s an intriguing story—one that still has much to teach us.

On the night of October 9, 1963, over 2,000* people were killed, most by a large wave that crested the Vajont Dam and crashed down into the Piave Valley below, obliterating entire villages. The wave was created when a huge landslide plunged into the lake behind the dam. In many ways, the landslide was predicted and avoidable. But when money interests took over, data and warnings were ignored and suppressed. Today, the Vajont Dam stands as a disused monument to tragedy and hubris. The reservoir was never refilled, and the dam no longer serves any hydroelectric function.

* Plaques at the dam mention 1910 lives lost but many web sites indicate more.

Construction of the Vajont Dam (1957–1960) was a prestige project for SADE and later ENEL, leveraging cutting-edge design to supply power to Italy’s booming industrial north. By 1963, billions of lire, years of labor, political capital, and public expectation had been poured into the dam.

Geologists repeatedly flagged the mountain above the lake behind the dam, called Monte Toc, as unstable with a risk of a catastrophic landslide. Yet ENEL and government authorities suppressed reports and downplayed scientific appraisals. Their late, insufficient remedy was to lower the reservoir level and that came only days before disaster struck. 

The landslide was estimated at 260 million cubic meters. That’s over 100 football stadiums filled to the brim.

Visitors to the dam can just look from a distance, walk on the crest of dam, or take an in-depth tour. We walked on the crest of the dam in a short guided tour and then walked down on our own to where the lake used to be to lay our hands on the dam. The spot we touched on the dam’s wall was still over 100 meters above its true base. We were standing on the landslide fill.

After visiting the Vajont Dam, we wondered:

• What did we learn?
• How did we feel?
• What will we do?

We'll return to these questions later in the post, but on the subject of learning we were intrigued to find out that the criminal proceedings and archival records related to the Vajont disaster have been officially recognized by UNESCO. In 2023, the Archivio Processuale del Disastro della Diga del Vajont (Criminal Proceedings Archive of the Vajont Dam Disaster) was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Museum of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto

On the same day we visited Vajont we also visited the Museo della Battaglia di Vittorio Veneto. This museum, located in the town of Vittorio Veneto, deals with the decisive battle of World War I that took place around the town.

Why was it the decisive battle in WWI? The battle fought from October 24 to November 4, 1918, marked the final offensive on the Italian Front and led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The battle effectively ended fighting on the Italian Front and contributed to the end of WWI just days later, with the armistice taking effect on November 4, 1918. The defeat shattered the Austro-Hungarian military and coincided with the political breakup of the empire, as various ethnic groups declared independence.

The defeat of the Austro-Hungarian military was called by the leader of the Italian forces, General Armando Diaz, “Caporetto in reverse”. The Battle of Caporetto, fought from October 24 to December 19, 1917, was a catastrophic defeat for Italy during World War I, where Austro-Hungarian and German forces broke through the Italian lines on the Isonzo front. Over 600,000 Italian soldiers either surrendered or deserted, forcing a chaotic retreat to the Piave River.

We are embarrassed to admit that we didn’t know that much about Caporetto or that Italy also changed sides in WWI. Our history teachers would be disappointed.

The town of Vittoria Veneto got its name in 1866 when two separate communities—Ceneda and Serravalle—were merged following the annexation of the Veneto region to the Kingdom of Italy. The new name honored King Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of unified Italy.

The museum of the battle is located in Ceneda. 

The next morning after visiting the museum, we walked around Serravalle. We passed under Casa Fighera (Porta San Giovanni) and read about the bullet marks on the building that were still clearly visible. While the Battle of Vittorio Veneto was not fought in town (Serravalle), Austrian troops fleeing town continued to fight against the Italian soldiers who chased them together with civilians who had taken up arms. These fights, which resulted in 5 deaths, 14 wounded and the capturing of a thousand prisoners, have left clear machine gun marks on the south-facing façade of Casa Fighera.

After leaving the museum, the same questions popped up about what we learn, what we feel, and what we do after this museum experience, just like they had at the Vajont dam earlier.

One of the people that popped up in the museum is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876 – 1944). We have always liked painters like Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1958) and Umberto Boccioni (1882 – 1916), who were influenced by Marinetti’s Manifesto del Futurismo (1908). By name alone the “manifesto of futurism” sounds attractive and interesting. But upon closer inspection not so much. Two themes and calls to action in the manifesto are the glorification of war as a “purification” and the “sole hygiene of the world,” and urging the demolition of museums and libraries to make way for progress. We would not even be visiting this museum today if Marinetti had his way? Marinetti appeared on an informational panel discussing people who wanted Italy to enter WWI (Interventionalists) and those who didn’t (Neutralists). You can guess what side Marinetti was on.

Beyond the Visit

What did we learn?

We learned that the Vajont dam is an engineering marvel. The Vajont Dam at 262 m (860 ft) was the tallest dam in the world when it was completed in 1960 and still one of the tallest double-curvature arch dams ever built. Its slender, 3.4 m crest width contrasted dramatically with a 27 m base, showcasing an audacious use of space and materials. Rather than relying on sheer mass, the dam’s double-curvature arch transfers water thrust laterally into the canyon walls. This geometry reduces concrete requirements compared to gravity dams and exemplifies advanced structural theory applied in the 1950s.

The dam withstood the wave caused by the landslide and still stands today.

No, the problem wasn’t with the dam but with the behavior of the humans involved. Specifically, with these biases:

• Sunk-cost fallacy. Decision-makers felt compelled to realize returns on sunk investments: halting the reservoir would have meant admitting costly mistakes and delaying power generation.
• Confirmation bias. Cherry-picking data that supported safety.
• Groupthink and political pressure. Engineers and officials rallied around the project’s success to avoid embarrassment.
• Normalcy bias. The unprecedented wouldn’t actually occur.

In the WWI battle museum, we learned about people and places involved, and why this was a turning point in WWI. The museum takes you back to 1917 and 1918 with audio, visuals and artefacts that give you an idea of the hardships and loss of life due to the battle and the larger war. It’s such an effective way of communicating facts and stories. 

The museum calls the objects on display (in Italian) cimeli. A cimelio is a relic (historical object) or an antique or memento (emotional value). In the museum, the cimeli, what we called artefacts, are both historical and emotional.

Some of the same biases mentioned above as well as others were also at play in this decisive battle and the larger war. For example:

• Overconfidence Bias. Despite dwindling morale and resources, Austro-Hungarian commanders underestimated the effectiveness of the reorganized Italian forces and their Allied support. This led to poor defensive preparations and a failure to anticipate the scale of the offensive.
• Groupthink. The high command, dominated by aristocratic and conservative elites, often suppressed dissenting views. Strategic decisions were made in echo chambers, ignoring warnings from field officers about troop fatigue and nationalist unrest within the ranks.
• Status Quo Bias. Even as the empire was fracturing politically, military leaders clung to outdated strategies and rigid hierarchies. They failed to adapt to the rapidly changing battlefield and political landscape, including the rise of independence movements among Czechs, Slovaks, and South Slavs.
• Confirmation Bias. Some commanders interpreted temporary Italian setbacks as proof that their own forces were still capable of holding the line, ignoring broader signs of collapse—like mass desertions and logistical breakdowns.

In short, we learned a lot about biases on this visit to the Vajont Dam and the Museum of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.


What did we feel?

In a word, sad. Sad for the loss of lives. Sad for waste of resources in both the war and dam. Sad for the fact that – in our understanding of the Vajont disaster – that there has never been a formal apology that explicitly admits the decision-making errors or psychological biases behind the collapse. Sad for the fact that wars continue today.

Re: war. Yes, things are better on average as Gapminder is quick to point out, but it sure doesn’t feel like that sometimes.

Also, we felt fear. Fear that we are repeating similar errors and biases in major projects and policies today. Case in point, the US (again) pulling out of UNESCO to cite just one small example relevant to our discussion here. How are we supposed to learn if we can't preserve accounts and records of what has happened and that isn’t supported by one of major world powers?

What will we do?

This is the hardest and most embarrassing question to answer. Well, we created this post, and we are thinking about where we might be operating on biases in our everyday lives.

But the nagging question is what we’ll do going forward? Beyond voting for candidates and supporting initiatives we think are good, are we putting any skin in the game? Will we join with others in causes to prevent another manmade disaster and war?

During our visit to Vajont, we heard a story of how an operator was on the crest of the Vajont dam the evening of the disaster. He was using a searchlight to check the status of the mountain at the moment a wave washed him away. While it’s true that operators often used spotlights and visual inspection to check the movement of the mountain, the operator story seems to be an apocryphal story. However, the image stood out in our minds: someone shining a light in the face of an oncoming 250-meter wall of water. Sometimes, we feel that helpless, that overwhelmed by what is coming at us. What do we do?

Photos

   

Left: A memorial to a family killed in the disaster
Center left: Before and after the disaster.

Center right: Looking down from the crest of the dam into the gorge,

Right: Schematic of the dam.

  

Left: Looking up at the crest of the Vajont dam.
Center: Touching the dam where water used to be, but still above the ultimate bottom of the dam by 100 meters or more.

Right: Technical data about the Vajont dam.

  

Left: The dam from below.

Center and right: Walking on the Vajont Dam, Italy.

 

Left: Chiesa di Sant'Antonio da Padova al Colomber - inside. (Vajont Dam)
Right: Chiesa di Sant'Antonio da Padova al Colomber - outside. (Vajont Dam)

 

At the Museum of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto - examples of cimeli (war items).

 

Examples of rooms in the Museum of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.

 

Left: Propaganda poster against the Austro-Hungarian.
Right: The Italian Interventionists and the Neutralists in World War I.

A Hike to Rifugio Tagliaferri via Val di Gleno

Overview | Hike Details | The Gleno Dam | Flora | Misc Photos

Upper left: A member of the Asteraceae family in the process of sending it's seeds. Upper right: The Gleno Dam from above. Lower left: The village of Vilminore in Val di Scalve. Lower right: Trail 410 in the Val di Gleno.

Overview

Length: 22.2 km (13.8 mi)
Duration: 9 hours (Includes 1 hour for lunch at the rifugio.)
Elevation: 2290 m (7510 ft) gain. High point at Passo Belviso at 2518 m (8260 ft)
Location: Pian del Gleno, Vilminore di Scalve, Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy

Hike Details

The main driver for today’s hike was to see the Gleno Dam. Ever since we saw a photo of it several years ago - part of it missing and in an impossible but beautiful looking setting - we knew we would go see it. Add to that the necessity of place to eat (because we walk to eat) and the hike to Rifugio Tagliaferri via Val di Gleno was born.

We were advised not to take Sentiero 411 – Sentiero 410 (via Val di Gleno) to the Rifugio Tagliaferri but rather to take the more popular Sentiero 413 (via Valle del Vò). We were glad we stuck to our original idea because Sentiero 411 seemed to be the less popular route, which for us was a good thing. And, Sentiero 411 is about the same in time and distance.

The hike worked out like this:

1. We started in Vilminore and took the shuttle up to Pianezza.
• If you are off-season, you can try and drive up to Pianezza and park.
• Or, you can start walking in Vilminore.
2. From Pianezza, we took Sentiero 411 to the dam.
3. From the dam, we picked up Sentiero 410 to Passo Belviso.
4. From Passo Belviso, we picked up Sentiero 321 to Rifugio Tagliaferri.
5. Lunch at Tagliaferri.
6. Reverse direction and head back to Pianezza/Vilminore.

Left: Hike stats: distance, velocity, time and altitude. Right: The hike route in the Val di Gleno.

A note on the shuttle bus:

We started in Vilminore and parked the car in one of the many free lots. From there, we took a small shuttle (navetta) up to Pianezza, where we started hiking. You can also hike right out of Vilminore by walking up to Pianezza following the road or taking one of the trails marked “Diga del Gleno”. We walked back down the road from Pianezza to Vilminore at the end of the day and it wasn’t bad. The shuttle costs 4 euros one way. We purchased tickets at Bar Imperial and the shuttle stop is at the municipio across the street from the bar. Why take a shuttle instead of driving up to Pianezza? During the summer months, only residents are allowed and you must take the shuttle. Off season, and you don’t need to worry. On our way up to the dam – around 8:00 am – it wasn’t crowded at all, that is, no people on the shuttle, few hikers, and few people at the lake except for some overnight campers. When we returned in the afternoon, the tents on the lake where gone and replaced by many families up to enjoy Sunday at the lake. And there was a waiting line for the shuttles back going from Pianezza down to Vilminore, which is why we walked.

On this hike it’s hard to get lost, but in bad weather, uncertainty, or just plain wanting to know how far to go to the next landmark, you can download the GPX tracks from the CAI links included in this post and use them in MAPS.ME. We’ve found that you sometimes need to convert tracks from the CAI Bergamo site from GPX to KML to get them to load in MAPS.ME.

There was a small refreshment stand / bar on the lake. After that, there is nothing until you reach Rifugio Tagliaferri. The Rifugio is named for Nani Tagliaferri, the first president of the Valle di Scalve chapter of CAI. Tagliaferri, the person, disappeared in 1981 in the glaciers of the Peruvian Andes. Tagliaferri, the rifugio, was inaugurated in 1985.


Some of the dishes a Rifugio Tagliaferri. Left to right: a simple pasta dish, salamella with polenta, lamb with polenta, and homemade apple cake.

The Gleno Dam

The central part of the dam collapsed early on the first of December 1923. From 1535 m (5,036 ft), the water rushed out finding its way to the north end of Lago Iseo at approximately 186 m (610 ft) and killing more than 350 people along the way. What went wrong? The dam had just been completed not more than four months before, but there were warning signs along the way from the quality of the cement and reinforcement used to a change in the type of dam permitted and type build. The last point is interesting because the Gleno Dam was permitted as a gravity dam but during construction which was changed from a gravity dam to a multiple-arch dam. A gravity dam relies on its weight to hold back water. A multiple-arch dam uses less concrete and relies on distributing the force of the water to the arches (buttresses) on both sizes of the dam. It’s these arches that give the Gleno Dam its captivating look as if it were of ancient Roman origin. But sadly, it wasn’t or else it would probably still be standing. Cost cutting to save concrete and reused scrap metal from WWI inside the concrete likely led to its collapse.

However, a very thorough analysis (in Italian) Il crollo della Diga di Pian del Gleno: Errore Tecnico? suggests that situation was much more complicated and that the dam was built to specifications of the time. Further, many of the allegations of bad cement or reused scrap metal may not have much to do with the collapse. The analysis also discusses the evidence supporting the possibility of sabotage, including the theft of dynamite two days before the collapse. The court case ran from 1924 to 1927 and found the owners and many others involved guilt, with compensation for damages to the survivors.


Views of the Gleno Dam (La Diga del Gleno) which collapsed in 1923.


An interesting point raised in the report is that the dam was planned to provide energy for a cotton factory. At one time, the valleys above Bergamo were filled with industry run by the water. Today, as you drive up the valleys, in this case Val Seriana and then into the Val di Scalve, you can’t help but notice along the road (which stays close to the river) the hulking abandoned factories that speak to that past. Some of the structures are beautiful examples of industrial architecture.

Another point from the analysis was this disturbing sentence: “L’ondata fu preannunciata da un violento spostamento d’aria che iniziò l’opera di distruzione, strappando le vesti a chi si trovava all’aperto, seguita dalla massa d’acqua che, dopo aver devastato I centri abitati della valle, si esaurì nell ago d’Iseo.” The translation is this: “The wave was preceded by a violent rush of air before the destruction, ripping off the clothes of those who were outdoors. The rush of air was followed by a mass of water that, after ravaging the population centers of the valley, found its way to the top of Lago Iseo.” The ripping-off of the clothes part stuck in my mind. In the report, there is a picture of the victims laid out in a room - presumably by the responders to the disaster - some with bits of cloth or twigs and branches discretely placed over private parts.

To this day, we’ll never know what caused the dam to collapse.


Information board at the dam talking about the collapse.

Flora

If we had to pick one plant that characterized this hike, it would be Sanguisorba. It is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rosaceae native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The common name is burnet. We guess we were seeing the most common type S. dodecandra – Italian Burnet (Salvastrella con dodici stami).

For more on flowers found around Bergamo, especially in the Bergamasque Alps, see our Pinterest page: Bergamasque Prealps Flowers and Plants.

Usual disclaimer: we use the resources listed in the post Resources for Identifying Plants around Bergamo to identify plants shown here. If we had to give ourselves a score for identifications, it would be 95% accurate for species and 98% for genus.

The plants are arranged below as follows:

[Family] Genus species – Common name in English (Common name in Italian)

[Amaryllidaceae] Allium schoenoprasum – Wild Chives (Erba cipollina)

[Apiaceae] Bupleurum petraeum – Rock Hare’s Ear (Bupleuro delle rocce)

[Asteraceae] Carlina sp.

[Asteraceae] Centaurea uniflora - Plume Knapweed (Fiordaliso alpino con un capolino)

[Asteraceae] Cirsium erisithales – Yellow Thistle (Cardo zampa d'orso)

[Asteraceae] Cirsium spinosissimum - Spiniest Thistle (Cardo spinosissimo)

[Asteraceae] Crespis aurea – Golden Hawk's Beard (Radicchiella aranciata)

[Asteraceae] Leontopodium sp. – Edelweiss (Stella alpina)

[Boraginaceae] Eritrichum nanum – Arctic Alpine Forget-me-Not (Eritrichio nano)

[Brassicaceae] Noccaea rotundifolium – Round Leaved Penny Cress (Erba storna a foglie rotunda)

[Caryophyllaceae] Cerastium arvense – Filed Chickweed (Peverina dei campi)

[Caryophyllaceae] Dianthus sp.

[Caryophyllaceae] Dianthus superbus – Fringed Pink (Garofano superbo)

[Caryophyllaceae] Saponaria officinalis – Bouncingbet, Common Soapwort (Saponaria comune)

[Celastraceae] Parnassia palustris - Marsh Grass of Parnassus (Parnassia delle paludi)


[Crassulaceae] Rhodiola rosea – Roseroot Stonecrop (Rodiola rosea)

[Crassulaceae] Sempervivium sp. – Mountain Houseleek (Semprevivo), possibly S. montanum

[Gentianaceae] Gentian sp. – Gentian (Genziana)

[Orobanchaceae] Pedicularis sp. – Lousewort (Pediculare) – possibly P. kerneri.

[Orobanchaceae] Rhinanthus sp. - Yellow Rattle (Cresta di gallo)

[Orobanchaceae] Euphrasia sp. – Alpine Eyebright (Eufrasia delle alpi)

[Papaveraceae] Pseudofumaria lutea – Yellow Corydalis (Colombina gialla)

[Plantaginaceae] Linaria alpina – Alpine Toadflax (Linajola alpina)

[Plumbaginaceae] Armeria alpina – Alpine Thrift (Spillone alpino)

[Rosaceae] Potentilla nitida – Pink cinquefoil (Cinquefoglia delle Dolomiti)

[Rosaceae] Sanguisorba dodecandra – Italian Burnet (Salvastrella con dodici stami)

[Ranunculaceae] Pulsatilla alpina – Alpine Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla alpina)

 

[Saxifragaceae] Saxifraga aizoides – Yellow Saxifrage (Sassifraga gialla)

[Saxifragaceae] Saxifraga byroides – Mossy Saxifrage (Sassifraga briode)

Miscellaneous Shots of the Hike

Left and center: Donkeys (or are they mules!?) eye us suspiciously. Right: Walking up the Val di Gleno.


Left: The trail along the Gleno River. Center: On Passo Belviso - A view of Lago Belviso. Right: View toward Presolana.


Left: A mural in Vilminore showing trail to the Gleno Dam. Center: A war monument in Castione della Presolana. Right: Vilminore - Parrocchia S. Maria Assunta e S. Pietro Apostolo.


Left: The start of the trail, just above Pianezza. Center: Trail 411 from Pianezza to the Gleno Dam. Right: Trail near Passo Belviso.