Between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, fifteen hill municipalities carry a terraced vineyard landscape shaped by hand since the Middle Ages. Steep clay slopes are held by earth banks rather than stone walls, planted almost entirely with Glera vines, and worked much as they have been for centuries. UNESCO recognised the area as a World Heritage Site in 2019.
At a glance
The Prosecco Hills stretch across fifteen municipalities from Conegliano in the east to Valdobbiadene in the west. The UNESCO-listed area is divided into a core zone of steep terraced vineyards, a wider buffer zone of mixed forest, orchard and vineyard, and a transition zone covering the remaining agricultural land of the fifteen municipalities. Within the core zone, the Cartizze hillside near San Pietro di Barbozza, Guia and Saccol is regarded as the finest single parcel for Prosecco production.
The wine produced here is Prosecco DOCG, with the hills themselves corresponding to the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG, in place since 2009. Within that, Cartizze Superiore DOCG marks a further step up, and single-vineyard wines from named slopes are labelled Rive, after the Venetian dialect word for a steep slope.
Key facts
- Location: fifteen municipalities between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, Province of Treviso, Veneto
- Total area: 8,853 hectares, including 2,338 hectares of vineyard
- Grape variety: Glera
- Wine classification: Prosecco DOCG, with Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG as the local designation since 2009
- UNESCO status: inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2019 (reference 1571)
- Documented winemaking: since at least the 10th century
History
The hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene appear as wine-producing territory in a Treviso episcopal charter of 982. The Glera grape, then known as Prosecco after the village near Trieste with which the name is associated, is recorded in Venetian agricultural documents of the 15th century; the wine itself has been linked, more distantly, to the vintage described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia as a favourite of the Roman empress Livia.
The distinctive terraces of the core zone were built during the Venetian period, between the 15th and 18th centuries, using earth banks known as ciglioni rather than the dry-stone walling seen in other Italian terraced landscapes such as the Cinque Terre or the Amalfi coast. In 1868 the agronomist Giovanni Battista Cerletti founded the Scuola Enologica di Conegliano, Italy’s oldest wine school, which trained the generations of winemakers who standardised Prosecco production through the twentieth century. The wine received Denominazione di Origine Controllata status in 1969, was upgraded to DOCG in 2009, and the hills themselves were inscribed by UNESCO in 2019.
What you see
The landscape is one of tightly packed, steeply pitched vineyard rows following the contours of the hills, the vines rooted into earth banks rather than stone terracing. The Strada del Prosecco, a wine route established in 1966 running from Conegliano to Valdobbiadene, threads through all fifteen listed municipalities and gives access to the main wineries.
In Conegliano, the old hill town centres on a fourteenth-century Duomo, whose Chapel of the Battuti holds a late-Gothic fresco cycle from 1384, among the largest of its kind in the Veneto after the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The town was the birthplace of the painter Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, whose Madonnas set against recognisable Prosecco hill topography are considered among the earliest place-based landscapes in Venetian painting; the view from Conegliano’s Castello di San Salvatore over the Piave plain and the vine-covered hills is close to the one Cima painted.
At the western end, near Valdobbiadene, the Cartizze hill rises as a single rounded dome of vineyard, its Glera vines planted on slopes of up to 45 degrees, visible from the SP1 provincial road. A handful of small producers around San Pietro di Barbozza and Guia still make Prosecco by the traditional Col Fondo method, bottling the wine before secondary fermentation finishes so that it ferments and clouds naturally in the bottle, a style largely displaced by industrial tank fermentation from the 1960s onward and revived by a small number of growers since around 2010.
Practical information
- Best season to visit: September, during the grape harvest known locally as la vendemmia
- Local event: the Mostra degli Spumanti at the Molinetto della Croda water mill near Cison di Valmarino, held during the harvest period
- Getting around: the Strada del Prosecco wine route can be followed by car over roughly two days, taking in Conegliano, the Cartizze hill and Valdobbiadene
- Tastings and visits: current details on wineries, opening arrangements and tasting bookings are best checked directly with the individual producers or the local tourist office
Getting there
The Prosecco Hills lie in the Province of Treviso, between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, and are most practically explored by car following the Strada del Prosecco. Conegliano and Treviso both have rail connections, making the area accessible as a day trip or overnight stay from Venice.
Nearby
- Molinetto della Croda — a water mill near Cison di Valmarino, host to the Mostra degli Spumanti harvest festival
- Abbey of Santa Maria di Follina — a twelfth-century Cistercian abbey on the route between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, noted for its Romanesque cloister
- Cartizze hill — the premium Prosecco sub-zone near Sant’Ambrogio di Valdobbiadene, viewable from the SP1 road
- Castello di San Salvatore, Conegliano — hilltop viewpoint over the Piave plain and the vine hills
Sources
- UNESCO
- Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia
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