The Po River Delta historical timeline

Origins

The lower Po was a shifting, marshy country in antiquity, with the Etruscan port of Spina and later Roman settlement on its edges, and its channels have moved repeatedly through recorded history.

Turning points

The decisive event is the Taglio di Porto Viro, 1600-1604. Venice, alarmed that the Po's sediment was filling the northern lagoon and would eventually join Venice to the mainland, dug a channel diverting the main flow south. The Republic protected its lagoon and in doing so built, over the following centuries, the delta that exists today.

Influential people

Reclamation of the resulting marshes ran from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, culminating in the great steam and then electric pumping stations -- Ca' Vendramin, opened in 1903, being the emblem of the effort.

Cultural evolution

The flood of November 1951 broke the embankments across the Polesine, drowning around a hundred people and displacing some 180,000. It triggered an emigration that emptied the province; many villages here have half the population they had before the war.

Present-day significance

The Delta became a regional park in 1997 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2015, and forms part of the World Heritage listing that covers Ferrara and its delta. Fishing, mussel farming, rice and tourism are what remain of its economy.