History

information office and cycle route service

The Coccau post station

Along the Alpe Adria Cycle Route, a few kilometers from the Austrian border in the direction Tarvisio, in an ideal position to be reached both by bicycle and by car, surrounded by green or snow-covered meadows, depending on the season, and by impetuous mountains, you can find Ristorante Pensione Exposta: a perfect place for a relaxing break during a trip or a quick escape from the city, a refreshment point with a restaurant, bar and guesthouse with 10 beds.

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exposta tarvisio 24-06-21T183910.577
Progetto senza titolo - 2024-06-21T183349.384
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some history

origins

The Coccau post station was located in an old building (vulgo Kanalaz) on the ancient Roman road and was probably built by the Melchior family, who owned it from the second half of the 18th century onwards.

Alongside the rooms for the specific duties of a post station, there were probably rooms used for refreshments and accommodation for postmen.

It can also be assumed that horses were changed at the post station, and it cannot be ruled out that carriages and wagons could be repaired there as needed. In fact, in the large stable built a short distance away, a room on the west side was intended for the carriages, while the actual stable was located on the east side.

A typical ramp, once made of wood and now of concrete, provides access to the large barn above.

gogau border customs

customs clearance

Between 1809 and 1813, the ‘Gogau’ border customs post between the Kingdom of Italy and Illyria was established at the building. The receiver of that customs post was a certain Luigi Giacomelli, who, according to the established practice, sent the quarterly customs register for approval to the register receiver Agostino Dorigo, who had his office in Malborghetto.

All this happened at a particular moment in the history of the valley, when after eight centuries of Austrian rule, the Napoleonic and Italic bureaucratic apparatus appeared here for the first time.

THE SUPPRESSION OF THE BORDER

from 1850 to the present day

After the suppression of the border garrison in Coccau, the building, which had briefly seen the settlement and then abandonment of Italian officials, was once again returned to the private use of ‘Herr Jakob Melchior’, a wealthy Austrian subject, documented again in 1850.

In an unspecified year, after the construction of the new imperial road in 1853 and the consequent abandonment of the old road route on which it stands, it passed into the ownership of the Lordship of Föderaun – Tarvis, who used it as accommodation for the Coccau forest rangers.

The house thus followed the fate of the lordship’s properties, from the private possession of Count Max v. Arco Zinneberg in 1876 to the public Kärnterische Religionsfond in 1887, to the Italian Azienda Patrimoni Riuniti ex Economali in 1929, and finally to the Fondo Ex Culto F.E.C. in 1987.

Texts edited by Edo Piantadosi from: 987.
La vecchia dogana napoleonica di “Gogau” – Valcanale Verde Anno VI n. 3-6-1991 di Raimondo Domenig