His grandmother, Ippolita, was born in the castle of Colloredo where, like the countryside of Camino and Varmo, Nievo spent long periods of time. A poet and a novelist, Nievo wrote in only few months "Le Confessioni di un Italiano" (Confessions of an Italian) in 1858, which has become one of the greatest masterpieces of national literature, of which many pages are set in Cordovado.  Colonel of Garibaldi in the expedition of the Thousand, Ippolito died in 1861 at the age of thirty in a shipwreck.