In the year 1007 the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II gave the Forest of Tarvisio to the Bavarian Bishop of Bamberg.
For more than seven centuries the Forest was part of the German principality, until it was acquired by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1759.
The area came under Italian dominion as part of the peace agreements with the Habsburg empire at the end of the Great War, and ten years later, with the Accord of 1929, the forest and other properties were entrusted to the “Fondo per il Culto”, having been part of Austrian religious properties.
Nowadays this wonderful wooded area of about 24,000 hectares at the foot of the Julian Alps is managed with care and attention by the “Fondo Edifici di Culto”, which succeeded the previous organization in 1985 after the revision of the Lateran Treaty.
Merely mentioning the historical events that have touched the Forest is enough to evoke its identity and recall its destiny as a frontier area.
For millennia it has been part of the turbulent story of the European continent, from the disintegration of great political and spiritual bodies like the Holy Roman Empire or the Mitteleuropean structure of Austria, to the great fractures experience after World War Two.
The care and promotion of this heritage is entrusted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs through the Department for Civil Rights and Immigration, which is home to the Central Director which administers the “Fondo Edifici di Culto”.