Audio tourWaterways Explorer: New lands: a short history of the reclamation process -

The current appearance of the landscape, on the final stretch of the Bacchiglione river before it reaches the Lagoon, is geometrical, a reminder of how this territory is the product of the centuries old task of conducting water to the sea, to obtain “new lands”. Indeed the land here is naturally below sea level, a condition similar to the Netherlands. The drying and cultivation of the area began with the Romans, continued with the medieval monastic orders, then with the Venetians, and finally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the large hydraulic operations made possible through mechanisation. The roads, houses, towns, the interweaving of canals and waterways are all evidence of this centuries-long  work and may be defined in one word: reclamation.