Aviano (; ) is a town and comune in the province of Pordenone at the foot of the Dolomites mountain range in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, northern Italy. Aviano is home to the C.R.O. (Oncological Referral Center), a cancer research centre, one of the few in Italy and reference point for north-eastern Italy. The Piancavallo ski resort is part of the municipality. History Findings from Aviano show that the area has been populated since the Bronze Age. It became an agricultural area dependent on the municipality of Concordia Sagittaria. The name itself, Aviano, derives from a prediale name, that is, referring to land belonging to a landowner named Avilius or Avidius. In the early Middle Ages Aviano was made up of parish churches and villages in correspondence with today's hamlets. Around the 11th century, on a hill overlooking the surrounding plain, a castle was built by the Patriarchate of Aquileia and given to local feudal lords. The castle was besieged several times, during the 14th century first by the Da Camino and then by the Carraresi, and in 1411 it was conquered by the Hungarian troops of Emperor Sigismund. Most historians believe that a commercial center developed where present day Aviano is situated with a cultural and defensive center in the castle area. Aviano was a possession of the Patriarchal State of Friuli until 1420, when it came under the influence of the Venetian Republic, like the rest of the territory of the Patriarchate of Aquileia. In 1477 and 1499 Aviano and the surrounding villages were devastated by raids of Turkish troops in which a large part of the population was killed or taken prisoner. With the fall of the Venetian Republic, Aviano followed the fate of the rest of Friuli and Veneto, and was part of the Napoleonic Empire and the Lombardy-Venetia Kingdom before being annexed - Italian State - to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866. In 1911 one of the first airfields of the Italian Air Force was built in Aviano, which in the following years was enlarged and became increasingly important until it became the NATO Aviano AB base in the 1950s. At the end of the sixties the mountain resort of Piancavallo became a ski and winter sports resort. Geography Although the village is located at the foot of the Carnic Prealpi, the municipality extends to an altitude of over above sea level, near the ski resort