Common Property Cavalese

Cavalese was not what I was expecting it to be. Anticipating an Italian winter wonderland, I was surprised to see a rainy, German-esque town. I later learned that Cavalese was more than just surprising on the outside. 

After resting up from a five hour drive to the town the night before, the first stop in the morning was to the Magnifica Comunita di Fiemme. Here we learned about the common property system in place in Cavalese. Common property means that a share of the land was owned by each family in the area. The main resource that the members of the community shared amongst themselves was lumber. Each family had a limit on the amount of lumber that they could cultivate in order to preserve the supply over the years. The profits from the lumber were divided into the community and given to the head of the household. After visiting the Magnifica Comunita di Fiemme, we took a tour of the lumber yard in Cavalese. There we saw how the lumber was processed and refined. 

Our article talked about common property from the 13th to the 19th centuries in the Italian Alps. A big dilemma was whether to use informal cooperation where there is no court system or to use a legal system where there is a court to control the economic affairs. The size of the community played a big role in this decision because larger communities were able to afford a costly legal system and establish a Charter but the cost of a legal system for a smaller community was more than the community could afford so they would govern their affairs through informal cooperation. Another issue of the common property system was trying to maintain long-term relationships within the community to avoid overexploitation of resources and hold people accountable for chores within the community. 

Common property is a unique economic institution and it was interesting to see how it applied in Cavalese.

Lumber yard in Cavalese