Lastreghe stone

The stone hills

Lastreghe village was named after the stone slabs found on Coi de Pera, that is “stone hills”.
In villages, stone houses were made with material found naturally: erratics, big pebbles and quarried stones. Wall typologies were determined by the kind of stone used. The nature of the stone is variable: common walls, without courses and with regular stones; irregular common walls with stone courses; square ashlar walls. A lot of stone houses are still intact, because of the great resistance stones have and because these buildings are very difficult to demolish: think about beautiful dry-stone walls found on walks along Val Belluna.


Restoring and building stone works means we have to be sensible and maintain the landscape quality: man has always intervened with a wise use of stone materials. In the 20th century the relationship between environment and stone has been through a deep identity crisis because of new materials introduced and because of raw materials imported from all over the world. In that period quarries where only used to get lime, by crumbling and baking the stone. Nowadays this industry seems to be about to be relaunched, due to new building procedures and to the sensitive recovery of the regional tradition.

New refined quarrying and processing techniques make the stone adaptable and the costs affordable, similar to imported stones and products. Lastreghe stone is similar to Cugnan stone, but darker and slightly greener; while Losego stone has got grey tonalities and is extracted and processed by Franco Prest’s Prest firm. Lastreghe stone is nowadays extracted and processed by Fratelli De Pra s.p.a., who in 1992 bought the quarry from the Stonecutter Cooperative, who had been working there since the post-war.


Lastreghe stone is used for restorations, coatings, floors, staircases, garden ornaments, fountains, wells and similar elements. It is also used for structural works, load-bearing walls and roof coverings. The latter are still made in accordance with the tradition, which had different laying typologies, depending on the available material size and thickness: partial overlap of wide and thin slabs; orderly arrangement of thicker slabs, inclined; or a tight weft of small flat irregular slabs which could come from soil tillage.

The Stone and its architecture today

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Detail: dry-stone wall coating. Private house, Visome, BL.

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Detail: coping of low wall. Private house, Mel, BL.

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Garden paving. Private house, Vittorio Veneto, TV.

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Long, narrow stair-like flagstones recalling the old building system in the Upper Alpago area, shrine, Valdenogher, Tambre.

The Stone and its architecture yesterday

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View of a group of houses, Lastreghe.

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View of a group of houses, Lastreghe.

For an analysis of the features of the material go to the Lastreghe stone technical page.

LASTREGHE STONE PAGE