Not many people are aware that the ice cream cone was invented in Cadore, and more exactly in Peaio (hamlet of Vodo di Cadore) by Italo Pietro Marchioni (12.12.1868 - 27.07.1954). He emigrated with relatives to the USA before 1896, the year in which he began using rolled wafers to serve ice cream in his ice-cream shop.
On 15 December 1903, he obtained a patent for a mould to produce cup-shaped wafers with which he produced the prototype cone. He launched his product in the St. Louis 1904 exhibition. Some competitors, however, challenged his patent: trials were held and he won the case in 1913. He set up a large factory in New Jersey to produce ice cream, waffles and cones. It is therefore worth visiting, in the Piazza della Mole in Peaio, along the cycle path and near the church and a wooden mill wheel, the copper monument celebrating the ice cream cone.
The author, the artist Diego Imperatore from Vodo, has depicted, next to the large cone, the stylised image of Marchioni, who looks at some pieces of flat wafers, placed at his feet, and thinks about the invention of the cone.
