PLANNED TO TECHNICAL VISITS TO 15 EXTRAORDINARY ITALIAN WATER LANDSCAPES IO M ON ON IM D R IA T L A E P • • W L O A I R D L D N H O E M R I E T IN AG O E • PATRIM Organizzazione Assisi, Basilica di San Francesco Historic Centre of Florence delle Nazioni Unite e altri luoghi francescani inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1982 per l’Educazione, iscritti nella Lista del patrimonio la Scienza e la Cultura mondiale nel 2000 SIGNED Dario Nardella Major of Firenze Stefania Proietti Major of Assisi Frate Antonello Fanelli Delegato per Ecumenismo Dialogo Integrità del Creato Filippo M. Soccodato FirenzeAssisi2024 Promoting Committe Chair of Advisory Board COMITATO ITALIA FIRENZE-ASSISI 2024 Francesca Greco Political Concept International Water Policy Expert Endro Martini Head Promoting Committe Alta Scuola President TECHNICAL VISIT TECHNICAL VISITS PRE DURING AND AFTER FORUM TRAVELS PROPOSED IN THE GREAT BEAUTY OF ITALIAN WATER LANDSCAPES During the period of the Forum and in the days pre / post forum a specialized team of travel agencies will organize a series of technical visits to a number of places characterized by the presence of both natural and artificial “water” sceneries that testify the history and the great beauty of Italian water land- scapes. Participants will be accompanied by one or more technicians. Each technical visit will be presented in detail in the final program and must be booked in advance. FIRENZE ASSISI ROMA PRE DURING AND POST FORUM 1- VENEZIA e il MOSE Venice is located in the North East of Italy, in the middle of the Venetian La- goon at the end of the Adriatic Sea. Venice, called Venezia in Italy, is entirely surrounded by salt water and run through by canals. With its gondolas, ca- nals, fantastic restaurants and unforgettable romantic atmosphere, Venice is definitely a city not to be missed. Venice is famous in the world as well as for being a floating city on the water also for the phenomena of “high water” that submerges it up to over one meter in height. It will be possible to visit, accompanied by the technicians who made it, the MO.S.E. o Mose (electromechanical experimental module) a civil, environmen- tal and hydraulic engineering work aimed at defending the city of Venice and its lagoon from the dangers associated with the phenomenon of high waters. ph. C. Goretti ph. C. Goretti ph. C. Goretti 2- DELTA DEL PO The Po delta is the set of fluvial branches that allow the river Po to flow into the northern Adriatic Sea after its course which starts from Monviso and crosses the entire Po Valley. The recent hydraulic structure is also a consequence of the Ferrara earthquake in 1570 and the cut of Porto Viro, a large hydraulic work carried out by the Republic of Venice in 1604. It consists of all the river branches and, by extension, the territory among them. Its surface is about 18,000 hectares. According to this definition, the Po delta falls entirely within the province of Rovigo or Polesine and occupies an enormous portion of it, the eastern one (from the incile of the Po di Goro to the sea) and represents an example of “active delta”. In a broad sense it embraces the largest area of the historical delta, the one between the ancient delta branches of the Po. In the past there were important southern branches of the watercourse, such as the Po di Volano and the Po di Ferrara or Po di Primaro, and this allows us to consider the cusp-shaped part of the province of Ferrara between the vertices of Stellata, Sacca di Goro and Valli di Comacchio as the territory of the delta. The recent hydraulic structure of the Po delta supports the more restrictive definition set out above, even if the coastal parts of the Province of Ferrara, in particular that between the mouth of the Po di Goro and the Lido di Volano and the part including the Comacchio Valleys , they retain a typically delta- marshy landscape aspect. The Po delta was included in 1999 among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Italy as an extension of the recognition conferred on the city of Ferrara in 1995. The Po Delta is classified as a Biosphere Reserve (MAB), a terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystem in which, through appropriate land management, the enhancement of the ecosystem and its biodiversity is combined with sustainable development strategies. 3- MILANO (floats an the Navigli) he Navigli of Milan are a system of irrigation and navigable canals, with the Lombard city of Milan as a center of gravity, which connected Lake Maggiore, Como and the lower Ticino, opening the waterways of Switzerland and the Lombard capital. Northwestern Europe, the Canton of Grisons and northeastern Europe and, finally, that of the Po towards the Adriatic Sea. With the regular water regime of the Navigli, vast areas were irrigated and made productive, connecting with the reclamation work begun by the monks of the abbeys south of the city already in the 10th century. The construction of the entire system lasted from the 12th to the 19th century. The Cerchia dei Navigli (also known as Naviglio Interno, Fossa Interna or Cerchia Interna) represented the Milanese “hinge” that allowed the system to function as a whole. 4- ISCHIA (The Termal Water) Located at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples and not far from the islands of Procida and Vivara, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, it is the largest of the Flegrean islands and an important destination for international tourism. The thermal waters of the island of Ischia are well known and used since ancient times. Its volcanic nature makes Ischia one of the largest spas in Europe. Ischia’s thermal waters are alkaline. The Greeks used the thermal waters to restore the spirit and the body and as a remedy for the healing of the after-effects of war wounds (in the pre-antibiotic era) attributing supernatural powers to the waters and vapors that gushed from the earth; it is no coincidence that temples dedicated to divinities such as that of Apollo in Delphi rose in every spa town. The Romans exalted them as an instrument of care and relaxation through the construction of public Thermae and they used the numerous springs of the island surely and profitably. Spas and thermalism actively resume talking in the Renaissance and a decisive impulse to modern thermal medicine was given by Giulio Iasolino, a Calabrian doctor, professor at the University of Naples, who towards the end of the sixteenth century, fascinated by the climate and phenomena of secondary volcanism (fumaroles and thermal waters), sensing the therapeutic potential of the thermal medium, carried out a meticulous census of the springs of the island (for the first time the hydrogeological wealth of the island territory appears), identified the composition of the waters and carried out detailed observation about the effects of the same on numerous pathologies that afflicted his contemporaries (in describing the Source of Castiglione, one of the most famous of the time, Iasolino expressed all his enthusiasm for the thermal waters: “Every day we see operations and virtues of this water so wonderful and stupendous that you really have to believe it is given by heaven for the health of u omini“). With the publication of the treatise “De ‘Natural Remedies that are on the Island of Pithecusa; now known as Ischia” Iasolino freed the thermal waters of Ischia from that magical aura that had conditioned its use until then. After the experiences of Iasolino, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, considering that many healings were obtained with the use of thermal baths and that the treatments in Ischia, quite expensive, could afford only nobles and wealthy bourgeois, a group of noble Neapolitan philanthropists built in the municipality of Casamicciola the “Pio Monte della Misericordia”, “spa (for the time) largest in Europe”, to allow even those who did not have adequate economic possibilities to enjoy the therapeutic qualities of the local thermal waters. From the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century, numerous establishments and accommodation facilities were built near the most renowned thermal springs that made the island of Ischia a renowned international health resort and residence where personalities came to treat diseases of the body, and not only famous as Giuseppe Garibaldi, after the battle of Aspromonte, Camillo Benso count of Cavour, Arturo Toscanini. Since the sixties, thanks to Angelo Rizzoli, the island of Ischia and its thermal waters have opened up to large tourist flows, with a specific scientific research activity on thermalism. 5-TORINO - Aosta - ALPI, Mont Blanc - Glaciers Mont Blanc (Mont Blanc in French and in Arpitan) is the highest mountain in the Alps, Italy, France, with its 4,808.72 m of altitude (last official measurement on 13 September 2017), and according to some conventions, of Europe, hence the nickname, sometimes used, of King of the Alps, sharing together with Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus a place among the so-called Seven Peaks of the Planet. Located in the North-Western Alps sector, along the Alpine section of the Graian Alps, on the watershed line between Valle d’Aosta (Val Veny and Val Ferret in Italy) and Haute-Savoie (Arve Valley in France), in the municipal areas of Courmayeure Chamonix, gives its name to the massif of the same name, belonging to the subsection of the Mont Blanc Alps. Mainly of granite nature, bristling with spiers and ridges, carved by deep valleys in which numerous glaciers flow, it is considered a mountain of great appeal for international mountaineering [6] and, from the point of view of mountaineering historiography, the birth of mountaineering itself coincides with the date of his first ascent: 8 August 1786.