The Surprising Story of Tycoon Giacomo Ceconi: From Illiterate Farmer In Friuli To A Noble In Trieste

Reading Time: 6 minutes

by Alessandra Ressa

Val d’Arzino is a beautiful green valley in the lower Alps of Friuli. An emerald river Arzino runs through Val d’Azzino’s breathtaking natural canyons and little villages full of charm and history. Located about 1.5 hours away from Trieste, it is seldom visited during summer, which makes it the ideal spot for peace and quiet, far away from the city’s traffic.

Arzino’s natural pools, located between Anduins and San Francesco, are a sight to see. The experience of jumping and swimming in their blue-green transparent and deep waters, if you can handle really low temperatures, is unforgettable.

Long-tailed colorful butterflies seem to like the Arzino pools as well. You can admire them flying by the water and feeding on wild plums.

While enjoying this little paradise, I couldn’t help but notice that everything around me – roads, squares, buildings, schools, parks, woods, even local children – were named after Count Giacomo Ceconi. Out of the four local children bravely diving in the Arzino natural pools, three were named Giacomo, and it was no coincidence.

But who was Count Giacomo Ceconi? As I had never heard of the man, I asked a few questions and did a little research, and this amazing story came out.

Giacomo Ceconi was born near the village of Pielungo (long foot in the Friuli language), in Val d’Arzino, in 1833. There were no schools there, children worked at a very young age, and Giacomo helped his parents with farming and making wooden soles for shoes.

The area was very poor and isolated, there were no roads connecting settlements, and life was hard. In 1851, at the age of 18, Giacomo decided to move to the city that was considered the Eldorado of the time: Trieste.

Trieste was the commercial and cultural jewel on the sea. Part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Trieste’s businesses were booming, particularly trading and construction, as the city was attracting international investments. It was rich and quickly expanding.

Giacomo soon found a job as an assistant bricklayer. He worked during the day and attended evening classes, where he learned the basics of geometric design in construction. His employers soon noticed his abilities in the field and began trusting him. He was consequently assigned important jobs and had teams of bricklayers at his orders.

Few years later, in 1857, he founded his own construction company in Trieste and trained and employed workers from his village in Val d’Arzino. His first successful task was the completion of the railway between Klagenfurt and Maribor.

It was the beginning of a booming career for Ceconi, who was engaged in building the most important railway connections, tunnels and stations all over the empire. So pleased were the Hapsburg with his skills that in 1879 he was granted Austrian citizenship.  

His most well known professional achievement was the Arlberg railway tunnel along the Bludenz-Insbruck line, connecting Western Switzerland and Voralberg to Tyrol. The tunnel was a pioneering success that made Ceconi’s name world-known.

At the same time, Ceconi greatly contributed to the infrastructural development of the port of Trieste. Inevitably, he became a very rich man. Although he was now part of the aristocratic elite and was on friendly terms with the Hapsburg family as well as with the Italian royal family, he never forgot his origins and invested a lot of his money and experience in modernizing the isolated and economically depressed Val d’Arzino.

Ceconi built roads and tunnels to connect villages and towns. The daring road dedicated to Queen Margherita (Strada Regina Margherita), which is still considered an engineering masterpiece, was built by Ceconi in 1891 and it put an end to centuries of isolation for the many villages of the area. He built dozens of schools and public infrastructures, and financially supported local businesses. He became a much loved benefactor. As a sign of  gratitude, local women started naming their children Giacomo.

He had money, fame and fortune, and was even married four times – all Giacomo Ceconi needed was a noble title. In order to obtain the title of “Count of the Italian Crown”, according to the regulations of the time, Ceconi had to own an appropriate residence in his place of origin. Consequently, with his outstanding building skills, he transformed his modest hay-roofed family home in Pielungo into a fairytale castle.

Located at the foot of Mount Cecon (what else?) the castle was, and still is, surrounded by a majestic forest built by Ceconi himself to revitalize an area that was subject to landslides. Ceconi possessed farms and dairies nearby, still open today. The castle itself is a beauty in its medieval-eclectic style, typical of the late 1800s. Ceconi spent his last years in his beautiful mansion. It had electric lighting generated by the nearby river, and underground heating. Count Ceconi died in Udine in 1910.

The castle of Pielungo has had a tumultuous history. During World War I the castle reported some heavy damage and during World War II it became the headquarters of the partisans of the Osoppo Brigade.

Nazi Germans managed to conquer it and set it on fire in July, 1944. After being rebuilt, it suffered heavy damages during the terrible 1976 earthquake that shook Friuli. In 2008 the castle and the surrounding beech tree forest were bought by the private firm Graphistudio. It was completely renovated and restored to its original splendor, although not much is left of the indoor frescos (many were painted by Trieste artists), decorations, furniture and art collection. The castle nowadays is used for photography conventions, courses, receptions and meetings.

Even though you can’t enter the castle, the outside grounds are open to public all year long and are really worth a visit. A short stop in Pielungo village will show how grateful the community still is to this outstanding hero. While there is not much to see and do in Pielungo itself, if you visit in summer you will be amazed at the thick bushes of blooming blue, violet and pink hydrangea.

Particularly touching is the church with its stone dedications to the victims of fascism and nazi occupation. Every year in this church there are sorrowful commemorations of the victims of fascism and nazism. In this area of Friuli partisan movements were the most active in Italy.

Many partisans from all over Italy joined the Osoppo-Friuli Brigades as they were the most organized and received many supplies by allied planes on almost daily basis. This caused ferocious retaliations on civilian populations from the Germans, who believed that all the villagers were helping partisans or were partisans themselves.

Road signs all around the area will take you to more old villages, some now completely abandoned and in ruins, WWI battlegrounds and forgotten war cemeteries.