Pirker

The house you are looking at is my family home, which my family has owned since the 1950s, although, much earlier, around 1914, my grandfather began his activity as a master watchmaker. My grandfather, before becoming a master watchmaker, was a native of the Cave del Predil area, in 1882, and from there, at the age of 14, he began travelling between various watchmaker’s shops of the empire, from Hermagor to Sarajevo, from Gorizia to Graz, until he ended up in Vienna, where, in a sense — I do not know whether a diploma existed at the time — he was declared a master watchmaker. And so, he was able to open his own artisan workshop, returning to Tarvisio in 1914. Over time, the business developed, taking on a more commercial character, especially in the years after the Second World War. And then in my hands, from the 1990s, it restored as the headquarters of an artisan workshop.
Restoring such an old house — the first part was built as far back as the mid-1400s — was an interesting discovery because probably at the time houses were built gradually, one room at a time, and so we discovered traces of old doorways in the walls that had been walled up or of windows that opened from one room to another. In fact, this meant precisely that over time houses were always built with materials found locally, river stones, bamboo canes to provide a degree of earthquake resistance, for the time, to the walls. And in any case, even uncovering the walls, removing the plaster, was an interesting discovery.
Sounds over time were those of the tools used for the work that was carried out. In the family there was a great tradition of musicians, among other things, so I imagine the sound of violins filling the house; my grandfather was a good violinist. I was lucky enough to know him and his anecdotes were indeed extremely interesting. One of my favourite anecdotes: I often and gladly go to Vienna and imagine the scenes, because when the Kaiser passed by in his carriage my grandfather was one of those who took off his hat and greeted the emperor.
Tarvisio still has part of an Austro-Hungarian soul, it is almost a cosmopolitan town. Already in the 1970s it was interesting to read the telephone directories, where there was an extraordinary variety of surnames, also because there was immigration because of the Cave Mine and also the Weissenfels industry in Fusina. So many so-called outsiders also came here, and there were surnames ranging from Sicily to Sardinia, obviously from Austria and Slovenia, and it was always a telephone directory more typical of a large city. Lower Tarvisio in past times until the 1950s was quite separate from Upper Tarvisio also precisely from the point of view of the buildings; this clearly shows that they were two distinct villages. For this reason as well, there are probably the two churches and even today, seen from above, seen from Via Roma, which is the main street, it is considered almost a village in its own right. And in fact, daily life too is of good neighbourliness, as it might be in a small village within a slightly larger town.
The end of the historic village of Lower Tarvisio is at the level of a crucifix that is now opposite the market. There was an empty area there measuring about fifty metres, perhaps a hundred metres; apart from a few houses, the whole market area was meadows and so that stretch separated Lower Tarvisio from Upper Tarvisio.