Comacchio and its Valleys represent the
"heart" of Delta, they really are Adriatic Coast's green lung, from Chioggia to Cattolica. Comacchio Valleys are a real museum and respresent one of the most important lagoon complex existing all around the Italy and
Europe. They extend in the Ferrara province and partially in Ravenna's one, for more than 11.000 ha, between Comacchio and the Reno
River, and they are linked by Magnavacca, Logonovo Bellocchio and Gobbino
channels. Formed by highly saltiness brackisch water, they represent an important zone and brackish water
biotope, constituted by an extremely alophile vegetation and are of declared international interest, as we can see from the Ramsar convention of 1971.
Around the Valleys has been based and developed the historical and economical growth of Comacchio's
territory; it is a quite unique example of integration between natural ambient and man
activity, where salt production and fishing have always represented the primary economical
bases, with that the local handmaking was mostly connected, because agriculture and tourism were quite
absent. These last economic components have developed quite in the same time with the proceeding of the reclamation
works, the draining of thousands of valley ha, with no change for that part where still today inhabitants play the local eel fishing using special trap
cages, called
"lavorieri".
The total surface is formed by Fossa di Porta (including Zavelea oasis), Magnavacca Lido, Fattibello (used in the recent past for daily support fishing) and Campo valleys; it offers an articulated morphology because of:
the artificial embankments created to delimitate fishing fields
the presence of rises, shallows and ancient dunous cordons appearing from waters
Boscoforte is a very suggestive strip of sandy land. This 6 km length peninsula stretches out along Fossa di Porto and Magnavacca, and it was formed from rising up of a dunous coastal cordon during etruscan period.
Living Museum: for plants, birds, rises, for the typical fishing houses (the "casoni"), and for the fishers you can meet in; for the memories of an ancient story...
Bringing with the wind the past's echo...
Comacchio Valleys have been originated around X century, when they extended for a 73.000 ha
surface, because of the soil's lowering (subsidence) and the coast's marshing. At first they were fresh water
valleys, formed by rivers' inundations. From the XVI century infiltration of sea waters was a further element which contributed definitively for the creation of the brackish
valley. Between banks and rises you could see so many casoni and tabarre, in their origins they were cane and straw
constructions, but they had been demolished between XVII and XVIII century and restored in
masonry. At the end of XIX century we could see more than 70 between casoni and tabarre in
activity, but today the war destroyments and the great draining works have riduced the active number of these constructions to 5 fishing stations and 7 vigilance
places.
We let to visitors the invitation to read the centuries - old sorrow of this world made by the waters in the
casoni, in the tabarre, in the cavanne, by ships, fishing tools, furnishings of the daily life of valleys
inhabitants, time ago locked up to their valleys as land's slaves...
