The Po River Delta Culture

The Delta's identity is built on fishing and shellfish farming. The cozze di Scardovari hold protected designation, the clam beds are worked from small flat boats, and the wooden casoni and stilted huts along the lagoon edges are the working architecture of it.

Eel is the traditional dish and the traditional catch -- grilled, or preserved -- and the eel fisheries of the lower Po were once famous well beyond the region.

Rice is the other product: Riso del Delta del Po has protected geographical status, grown on the reclaimed land behind the lagoons.

The 1951 flood is the region's defining collective memory, and the emigration it caused is the reason so many Polesine surnames turn up in Milan, Turin and abroad.

This is not a monumental landscape and there is little to see in the villages themselves. The culture here is out on the water, and the way to meet it is to go out with someone who works it.