Tartaro-Canalbianco-Po di Levante
Tartaro-Canalbianco-Po di Levante is a river of north-east Italy. It is the only river whose course runs between the Adige river and the Po river and flows into the Adriatic Sea; the first part of its course, whose length is 52 kilometres from resurgences to Torretta, flows in the province of Verona and in the province of Mantua and is known by the name of Tartaro. The second part of its course, whose length is 78 kilometres from Torretta to Volta Grimana, flows in the province of Rovigo and is known by the name of Canalbianco or Canal Bianco; the third and final part of its course, whose length is 17 kilometres from Volta Grimana to mouth, flows in the province of Rovigo and is known by the name of Po di Levante. The river rises from resurgences in the hills to the southeast of the Lago di Garda and its former lower course had followed what is the lower course of the Adigetto Canal until the breach at Pinzone in the 10th century. Since the breach at Pinzone the lower course of the Tartaro has followed what was the former lower course of the Mincio river and of the ancient Adria river.
After the breach at Ficarolo in 1152 the Po river diverted to the north and the Tartaro river became one of its tributaries. After the Malopera breach in 1438 the Tartaro overflowed and new embankments were built following the previous natural course; the "Porto Viro cut-off" in 1604 diverted the Po river before the confluence of the Tartaro-Canalbianco. It flows by the modern Adria; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed.. "article name needed". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London: John Murray. "Piano di Assesto Idrogeologico Fissero-Tartaro-Canalbianco". Veneto region homepage. Retrieved 8 July 2009
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto to the northwest and the Po Valley; the countries with coasts on the Adriatic are Albania and Herzegovina, Italy and Slovenia. The Adriatic contains over 1,300 islands located along the Croatian part of its eastern coast, it is divided into three basins, the northern being the shallowest and the southern being the deepest, with a maximum depth of 1,233 metres. The Otranto Sill, an underwater ridge, is located at the border between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas; the prevailing currents flow counterclockwise from the Strait of Otranto, along the eastern coast and back to the strait along the western coast. Tidal movements in the Adriatic are slight, although larger amplitudes are known to occur occasionally; the Adriatic's salinity is lower than the Mediterranean's because the Adriatic collects a third of the fresh water flowing into the Mediterranean, acting as a dilution basin.
The surface water temperatures range from 30 °C in summer to 12 °C in winter moderating the Adriatic Basin's climate. The Adriatic Sea sits on the Apulian or Adriatic Microplate, which separated from the African Plate in the Mesozoic era; the plate's movement contributed to the formation of the surrounding mountain chains and Apennine tectonic uplift after its collision with the Eurasian plate. In the Late Oligocene, the Apennine Peninsula first formed, separating the Adriatic Basin from the rest of the Mediterranean. All types of sediment are found in the Adriatic, with the bulk of the material transported by the Po and other rivers on the western coast; the western coast is alluvial or terraced, while the eastern coast is indented with pronounced karstification. There are dozens of marine protected areas in the Adriatic, designed to protect the sea's karst habitats and biodiversity; the sea is abundant in flora and fauna—more than 7,000 species are identified as native to the Adriatic, many of them endemic and threatened ones.
The Adriatic's shores are populated by more than 3.5 million people. The earliest settlements on the Adriatic shores were Etruscan and Greek. By the 2nd century BC, the shores were under Rome's control. In the Middle Ages, the Adriatic shores and the sea itself were controlled, to a varying extent, by a series of states—most notably the Byzantine Empire, the Croatian Kingdom, the Republic of Venice, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire; the Napoleonic Wars resulted in the First French Empire gaining coastal control and the British effort to counter the French in the area securing most of the eastern Adriatic shore and the Po Valley for Austria. Following Italian unification, the Kingdom of Italy started an eastward expansion that lasted until the 20th century. Following World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, the eastern coast's control passed to Yugoslavia and Albania; the former disintegrated during the 1990s. Italy and Yugoslavia agreed on their maritime boundaries by 1975 and this boundary is recognised by Yugoslavia's successor states, but the maritime boundaries between Slovenian, Bosnian-Herzegovinian, Montenegrin waters are still disputed.
Italy and Albania agreed on their maritime boundary in 1992. Fisheries and tourism are significant sources of income all along the Adriatic coast. Adriatic Croatia's tourism industry has grown faster economically than the rest of the Adriatic Basin's. Maritime transport is a significant branch of the area's economy—there are 19 seaports in the Adriatic that each handle more than a million tonnes of cargo per year; the largest Adriatic seaport by annual cargo turnover is the Port of Trieste, while the Port of Split is the largest Adriatic seaport by passengers served per year. The origins of the name Adriatic are linked to the Etruscan settlement of Adria, which derives its name from the Illyrian adur meaning water or sea. In classical antiquity, the sea was known as Mare Adriaticum or, less as Mare Superum, " upper sea"; the two terms were not synonymous, however. Mare Adriaticum corresponds to the Adriatic Sea's extent, spanning from the Gulf of Venice to the Strait of Otranto; that boundary became more defined by Roman authors – early Greek sources place the boundary between the Adriatic and Ionian seas at various places ranging from adjacent to the Gulf of Venice to the southern tip of the Peloponnese, eastern shores of Sicily and western shores of Crete.
Mare Superum on the other hand encompassed both the modern Adriatic Sea and the sea off the Apennine peninsula's southern coast, as far as the Strait of Sicily. Another name used in the period was Mare Dalmaticum, applied to waters off the coast of Dalmatia or Illyricum; the names for the sea in the languages of the surrounding countries include Albanian: Deti Adriatik. In Croatian and Slovene, the sea is referred to as Jadran; the Adriatic Sea is a semi-enclosed sea, bordered in the southwest by the Apennine or Italian Peninsula, in the northwest by the Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in the northeast by Slovenia, Croatia, B
Peschiera del Garda
Peschiera del Garda is a town and comune in the province of Verona, in Veneto, Italy. When Lombardy-Venetia was under Austrian rule, Peschiera was the northwest anchor of the four fortified towns constituting the Quadrilatero; the fortress is on an island in the river Mincio at its outlet from Lake Garda. The town is encircled by massive Venetian defensive systems that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 9 July 2017. Roman Ardelica was a town of Gallia Transpadana that occupied the site of the modern Peschiera del Garda, at the southeast angle of the Lacus Benacus, just where the Mincius issued from the lake; the name is found under the corrupted form Ariolica in the Tabula Peutingeriana, which places it between Brixia and Verona. The town is mentioned as Arilica in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia; the fortress at Peschiera played a prominent part in most military campaigns conducted in northern Italy after 1400 during the Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.
At the Battle of Peschiera fought on 6 August 1796, the day after the major French victory at the Battle of Castiglione, a French force commanded by general Masséna drives out the Austrians. After the Siege of Peschiera, during the First Italian War of Independence, it was taken by the Piedmontese from the Austrians, following a gallant defence by general Rath lasting six weeks, on 30 May, 1848. Peschiera del Garda was known for its military jail, which closed in 2002; the comune is part of the Associazione Città del vino. In winter, the nearby Laghetto del Frassino is the most important habitat for tufted ducks in Italy, it is home to one or more prehistoric pile-dwelling settlements that are part of the Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps UNESCO World Heritage Site.location Belvedere. They were included in UNESCO's World Heritage Site list as part of "Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th and 17th centuries: Stato da Terra – western Stato da Mar" in 2017. Sanctuary of Madonna del Frassino.
It houses works by Zeno da Verona. Peschiera del Garda railway station, opened in 1854, forms part of the Milan–Venice railway; the town is additionally served by ferry services, which connect it to other towns on the coast of Lake Garda, including Sirmione and Desenzano del Garda. Castelnuovo del Garda Valeggio sul Mincio Ponti sul Mincio Pozzolengo Sirmione Ula Tirso, Italy Capoterra, Italy Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina Morbioli, Marco. "L'avifauna del Laghetto del Frassino". Bollettino del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona Botanica Zoologia: 275–291. PDF fulltext Associazione Città del vino
Po (river)
The Po is a river that flows eastward across northern Italy. The Po flows either 682 km -- considering the length of the Maira, a right bank tributary; the headwaters of the Po are a spring seeping from a stony hillside at Pian del Re, a flat place at the head of the Val Po under the northwest face of Monviso. The Po ends at a delta projecting into the Adriatic Sea near Venice, it has a drainage area of 74,000 km² in all, 70,000 in Italy, of which 41,000 is in montane environments and 29,000 on the plain. The Po is the longest river in Italy; the Po extends along the 45th parallel north. The river flows through many important Italian cities, including Turin and Ferrara, it is connected to Milan through a net of channels called navigli, which Leonardo da Vinci helped design. Near the end of its course, it creates a wide delta at the southern part of, Comacchio, an area famous for eels; the Po valley was the territory of the Roman Cisalpine Gaul, divided into Cispadane Gaul and Transpadane Gaul. The Po begins in the Alps, is in Italy, flows eastward.
The river is subject to heavy flooding. Over half its length is controlled with argini, or dikes; the slope of the valley decreases from 0.35 % in the west to 0.14 % in a low gradient. There are 450 standing lakes, it is characterized by its large discharge. The vast valley around the Po is called the Po Po Valley. In 2002, more than 16 million people lived there, at the time nearly ⅓ of the population of Italy; the two main economic uses of the valley are for agriculture, both major uses. The industrial centres, such as Turin and Milan, are located on higher terrain, away from the river, they rely for power on the numerous hydroelectric stations in or on the flanks of the Alps, on the coal/oil power stations which use the water of the Po basin as coolant. Drainage from the north is mediated through several scenic lakes; the streams are now controlled by so many dams as to slow the river's sedimentation rate, causing geologic problems. The expansive and fertile flood plain is reserved for agriculture and is subject to flash floods though the overall quantity of water is lower than in the past and lower than demand.
The main products of the farms around the river are cereals including – unusually for Europe – rice, which requires heavy irrigation. The latter method is the chief consumer of surface water, while industrial and human consumption use underground water; the Po Delta wetlands have been protected by the institution of two regional parks in the regions in which it is situated: Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. The Po Delta Regional Park in Emilia-Romagna, the largest, consists of four parcels of land on the right bank of the Po and to the south. Created by law in 1988, it is managed by a consortium, the Consorzio per la gestione de Parco, to which Ferrara and Ravenna provinces belong as well as nine comuni: Comacchio, Ostellato, Mesola, Ravenna and Cervia. Executive authority resides in an assembly of the presidents of the provinces, the mayors of the comuni and the board of directors, they employ a Park Council to carry out directives. In 1999 the park was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and was added to "Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, its Po Delta."
The 53,653 ha of the park contain wetlands, forest and salt pans. It has a high biodiversity, with 1000–1100 plant species and 374 vertebrate species, of which 300 are birds; the most recent part of the delta, which projects into the Adriatic between Chioggia and Comacchio, contains channels that connect to the Adriatic and on that account is called the active delta by the park authorities, as opposed to the fossil delta, which contains channels that no longer connect the Po to the Adriatic. The active delta was created in 1604 when the city of Venice diverted the main stream, the Po grande or Po di Venezia, from its channel north of Porto Viro to the south of Porto Viro in a channel called the Taglio di Porto Viro, "Porto Viro cut-off", their intent was to stop the gradual migration of the Po toward the lagoon of Venice, which would have filled up with sediment had contact been made. The subsequent town of Taglio di Po grew around the diversionary works; the lock of Volta Grimana blocked the old channel, now the Po di Levante, which flows to the Adriatic through Porto Levante.
Below Taglio di Po the Parco Regionale Veneto, one of the tracts under the authority of the Parco Delta del Po, contains the latest branches of the Po. The Po di Gnocca branches to the south followed by the Po di Maestra to the north at Porto Tolle. At Tolle downstream the Po di Venezia divides into the Po delle Tolle to the south and the Po della Pila to the north; the former exits at Bonelli. The latter divides again at Pila into the Busa di Tramontana to the north and the Busa di Scirocco to the south, while the mainstream, the Busa Dritta, enters Punta Maistra and exits past Pila lighthouse. Despite the park administration's definition of the active delta as beginning at Porto Viro, there is another active channel upstream from it at Santa Maria in Punta, where the Fiume Po d
Adria
Adria is a town and comune in the province of Rovigo in the Veneto region of Northern Italy, situated between the mouths of the rivers Adige and Po. The remains of the Etruscan city of Atria or Hatria are to be found below the modern city, three to four metres below the current level. Adria and Spina were the Etruscan depots for Felsina. Adria may have given its name during an early period to the Adriatic Sea, to which it was connected by channels; the first settlements built on the area are of Venetic origin, during the twelfth to ninth centuries BC, consisting from stilt houses in the wetlands, that were still close to the sea. At that time the main stream of the Po, the Adria channel, flowed into the sea by this area; the Villanovan culture, named for an archaeological site at the village of Villanova, near Bologna, flourished in this area from the tenth until as late as the sixth century BC. The foundations of classical Atria are dated from 530 to 520 BC; the Etruscans built the port and settlement of Adria after the channel started to run dry.
During the period of the sixth century BC the port continued to flourish. The Etruscan-controlled area of the Po Valley was known as Padanian Etruria, as opposed to their main concentration along the Tyrrhenian coast south of the Arno. Greeks from Aegina and from Syracuse by Dionysius I colonised the city making it into an emporion. Greeks had been trading with the Veneti from the sixth century BC at least the amber coming from the Baltic sea. Mass Celtic incursions into the Po valley resulted in friction between the Gauls and Etruscans and intermarriage, attested by epigraphic inscriptions on which Etruscan and Celtic names appear together; the city was populated by Etruscans, Veneti and Celts. Pliny the Elder, a Roman author and fleet commander, wrote about a system of channels in Atria that was, “first made by the Tuscans, thus discharging the flow of the river across the marshes of the Atriani called the Seven Seas, with the famous harbor of the Tuscan town of Atria which gave the name of Atriatic to the sea now called the Adriatic.”
Those “Seven Seas” were interlinked coastal lagoons, separated from the open sea by sand pits and barrier islands. The Etruscans extended this natural inland waterway with new canals to extend the navigation possibilities of the tidal reaches of the Po all the way north to Atria; as late as the time of the emperor Vespasian, shallow draft galleys could still be rowed from Ravenna into the heart of Etruria. Under Roman occupation the town ceded importance to the former Greek colony Ravenna as the continued siltation of the Po delta carried the seafront further to the east; the sea is now about 22 kilometres from Adria. The first exploration of ancient Atria was carried out by Carlo Bocchi and published as Importanza di Adria la Veneta; the collections of the Bocchi family were given to the public at the beginning of the 20th century and comprise a major part of the city museum collection of antiquities. There are several ideas concerning the etymology of the ancient toponym Adria/Atria. One theory is that it derives from the Illyrian word adur “water, sea”.
At the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the port of Adria had lost most of its importance. It declined after the total change of the local hydrography in 589, Adria became a fief of the archdiocese of Ravenna. After a period as an independent commune, it was a possession of the Este of Ferrara and, in the 16th century, of the Republic of Venice. At that time Adria was a small village surrounded by malaria-plagued marshes, it recovered its importance. During the Napoleonic Wars it was first under France under Austria, to which it was assigned in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, as part of Lombardy-Venetia. Church of Santa Maria Assunta della Tomba, of medieval origin but rebuilt in 1718, it houses an octagonal baptismal font from the 7th or 8th century, with the carved name of the 3rd bishop of Adria, Bono. Other artworks include several 15th and 16th century paintings, and, in the chapel, a terracotta relief depicting a Dormitio Virginis, attributed to Michele da Firenze. Adria Cathedral, the New Cathedral, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Adria Adria is twinned with the following towns: Ermont, France Kalisz, Poland Lampertheim, Germany Maldegem, Belgium Rovinj, since 1982 Chieri, Italy Bishopric of Adria This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed..
"Adria". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Matthew George. "article name needed". Easton's Bible Dictionary. T. Nelson and Sons. Northern Etruria Etruscan Engineering and Agriculture International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: "Adria" Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976: "Adria, Italy Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Adria
Pinzolo
Pinzolo is a small town and comune situated in Val Rendena in Trentino in the northern Italian Alps at an elevation of 800 metres. The Church of Saint Vigilius of Trent stands in the town, it is known as a ski resort during the winter months and as a popular touristic destination in the summer. In January 2017 Valentino Rossi became Honorary Resident of the town. Sarca Official website
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the twenty administrative regions of Italy, in the northwest of the country, with an area of 23,844 square kilometres. About 10 million people, forming one-sixth of Italy's population, live in Lombardy and about a fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in the region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest regions in Europe. Milan, Lombardy's capital, is the largest metropolitan area in Italy; the word Lombardy comes from Lombard, which in turn is derived from Late Latin Longobardus, derived from the Proto-Germanic elements *langaz + *bardaz. Some sources derive the second element instead from Proto-Germanic *bardǭ, *barduz, related to German Barte. During the early Middle Ages "Lombardy" referred to the Kingdom of the Lombards, a kingdom ruled by the Germanic Lombards who had controlled most of Italy since their invasion of Byzantine Italy in 568; as such "Lombardy" and "Italy" were interchangeable. The Kingdom was divided between Longobardia Major in the north and Langobardia Minor in the south, which were until the 8th century separated by the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna and the Papacy.
During the late Middle Ages, after the fall of the northern part of the Kingdom to Charlemagne, the term shifted to mean Northern Italy.. The term was used until around 965 in the form Λογγοβαρδία as the name for the territory covering modern Apulia which the Byzantines had recovered from the Lombard rump Duchy of Benevento. With a surface of 23,861 km2, Lombardy is the fourth-largest region of Italy, it is bordered by Switzerland and by the Italian regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont. Three distinct natural zones can be easily distinguished in Lombardy: mountains and plains—the latter being divided in Alta and Bassa; the orography of Lombardy is characterised by the presence of three distinct belts: a northern mountainous belt constituted by the Alpine relief, a central piedmont area of pebbly soils of alluvial origin, the Lombard section of the Padan plain in the southernmost part of the region. The most important mountainous area is an Alpine zone including the Lepontine and Rhaetian Alps, the Bergamo Alps, the Ortler Alps and the Adamello massif.
The plains of Lombardy, formed by alluvial deposits, can be divided into the Alta—an upper, permeable ground zone in the north and a lower zone—and the Bassa—dotted by the so-called line of fontanili, spring waters rising from impermeable ground. Inconsistent with the three distinctions above made is the small subregion of Oltrepò Pavese, formed by the Apennine foothills beyond the Po River; the mighty Po river marks the southern border of the region for a length of about 210 km. In its progress it receives the waters of the Ticino River, which rises in the Bedretto valley and joins the Po near Pavia; the other streams which contribute to the great river are, the Olona, the Lambro, the Adda, the Oglio and the Mincio. The numerous lakes of Lombardy, all of glacial origin, lie in the northern highlands. From west to east these are Lake Maggiore, Lake Lugano, Lake Como, Lake Iseo, Lake Idro Lake Garda, the largest in Italy. South of the Alps lie the hills characterised by a succession of low heights of morainic origin, formed during the last Ice Age and small fertile plateaux, with typical heaths and conifer woods.
A minor mountainous area, the Oltrepò Pavese, lies south of the Po, in the Apennines range. In the plains, intensively cultivated for centuries, little of the original environment remains; the most commons trees are elm, sycamore, poplar and hornbeam. In the area of the foothills lakes, grow olive trees and larches, as well as varieties of subtropical flora such as magnolias, acacias. Numerous species of endemic flora in the Prealpine area include some kinds of saxifrage, the Lombard garlic, groundsels bellflowers and the cottony bellflowers; the highlands are characterised by the typical vegetation of the whole range of the Italian Alps. At a lower levels oak woods or broadleafed trees grow. Shrubs such as rhododendron, dwarf pine and juniper are native to the summital zone. Lombardy counts many protected areas: the most important are the Stelvio National Park, with alpine wildlife: red deer, roe deer, chamois, foxes and golden eagles. L
