The Septem Mària Museum was officially open on 21 November, 1998. It lies in the outskirts of Adria, a town that had its full splendours more than 2000 years ago, when it changed from a little pile-dwelling hamlet, inhabited by early Veneto people, to a important commercial market, with a famous harbour, thanks to the arrival of Greek and Etruscan merchants.
The town was so important that the Adriatic sea was named after it.
The Museum is in the engine room of Amolara dewatering plant, a neoclassical building designed by Engineer Cesare De Lotto in 1853 for the “drainage of the Consortium Campagna Vecchia Inferiore by means of steam dewatering pump”.
When the dewatering plant closed down in 1922, there was an unavoidable decay until 1997, when Mr Giuseppe Marangoni, the director of the Tourism & Culture Cooperative, proposed the re-use of the building to the Consortium of Reclamation Work Polesine Adige- Canalbianco.
The building was transformed into a multipurpose centre that hosts the Museum of water history and civilization, a laboratory for naturalistic engineering research, a congress centre, a tourist information office and the Hostel of Amolara, to welcome the visitors of Adria and of the Natural Park of the Po Delta.
Thanks to the enlightened decision of Sir Marino Bianchi, president of the Consortium, and to the wise and effective work of the director, Mr Carlo Piombo, in November 1998 the Museum opened its first exhibition.
The Septem Mària is a Museum that deals with water in a building that was constructed for water.
The Museum goes over the history of water, of the relations between the different civilizations and the water, considered as a resource and not as a problem. It was named after the Historian Pliny the Elder who called this land Septem Mària (seven seas).
The Museum lies in a land called Polesine.
That name was coined in the Middle Ages and sprang from Polesinus, Policinus that means lands emerging from water.
This area had been previously called “Adrian marshes” or “seven seas” by the historian Pliny the Elder in the first century A.D., who meant to highlight the peculiarity of swamps and lagoons.
The importance of water in this territory is therefore obvious.
Since it first settled in this area, the human being has been continuously aimed at trying to find his/her balance between earth and water.
The most part of the Po Delta is below the sea level (maximum depth circa 5 metres), that is why , even today, it is necessary to use dewatering pumps to keep it dry.
“Water” is therefore the clue of the Museum that is naturally set in the engine room of one of the oldest dewatering plants of Polesine.
We started the Museum considering that, beyond the peculiar situation of Polesine, water is at the basis of life:
- The first forms of life started in water
- We all spent the first months of our life in water
- Water is a basic component part of the living
- There is no life without water
- Too much water causes inconveniences to human beings
The Museum wants to help the visitor to discover the leanings of Polesine and its economic potentialities.
Besides, through the knowledge of the past, the Museum wants to provide the instruments for interventions in the presents.
The core of the museum is hosted in the engine room of the dewatering plant, which contains two well preserved centrifugal pumps (total flow: 7200 litres of water per second). They remove the water in excess from the “Lower Old Country” and empty it into the opposite drainage canal.
Then they carry the water into the sea by the Canalbianco.
Before the engine room there are the Drainage Workshop and an entrance room where the visitors can admire Filippo Cruverio’s engraving, of 1624, which shows the Septem Mària district spreading from Altino to Ravenna and from Ostiglia to the sea.
The Museum belongs to the Consortium of the Reclamation Work Polesine Adige Canalbianco.
The Museum is directed by Mr Giuseppe Marangoni and Mr Alberto Spagnolo. It is run by the cooperative Tourism & Culture and is connected to the net of CeDi (Learning Centre of the Culture and Environment Department, Piazzale S. Bartolomeo, 18 – Rovigo), which cooperates with different administrations, such as Local Authorities, the Province, Government offices, the State Archive, schools and other museums of the provinces of Rovigo, Padua and Ferrara: the Museum of the Long Rivers (Rovigo), the Museum of the Court (Porto Viro – Rovigo), the Naturalistic Museum of Villa Vetrice (Baone – Padua), the Geopalaeontologist Museum of Cava Bomba (Cinto Euganeo – Padua), the Museum of Inland Navigation (Battaglia Terme – Padua), the Civic Museum of Natural History (Ferrara), the Environment Educational Centre (Mesola – Ferrara), the Museum of the Roman Ship (Comacchio – Ferrara).
URL: http://www.smppolesine.it /septemmaria /eng_pagine /home.php | Last update: 05 August 2011 03:02:22