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Water Museum of Venice, Italy

Water Museum of Venice, Civiltà dell’Acqua International Centre, Italy

The Water Museum of Venice aims to assemble the most significant attributes of the rich but fragmented heritage of Water Civilizations’ “liquid universe” of the Tre Venezie through an innovative online platform, which will facilitate the localization of, and visit to, a number of sites.
Once connected you can go on a virtual tour and find information and useful news about the unique features of the “liquid civilization” which developed in the Tre Venezie region. But the Water Museum of Venice is also an open air museum, or eco museum, which aims to create, starting from Padua, a network of institutions and people who manage the tangible and intangible heritage shaped by humans in places where water is the dominant element.
From elegant stately homes to imposing castles which arose, not by chance, along the territory’s “liquid roads”, from navigation basins to river ports and moorings, from mills to water museums: some of the heritage connected to the use of water which, historically, was a propeller of progress and civilization, is today the subject of important leisure and tourist activities.
The Water Museum of Venice also incorporates a section on good current practices (projects to revitalize water ecosystems, regenerate aquifers, etc.) as an expression of a more enlightened contemporary “Culture of Water”. This type of Museum, therefore, is a challenge towards building a better future: it is addressed to citizens and authorities who believe wholeheartedly in preserving the quality of all water, whether surface or underground, as well as the historical heritage which still evocatively narrates its special and unique relationship with this most precious life source.

Museum website: www.watermuseumofvenice.com

Itineraries

A Day on the River Bacchiglione

Up until the 1960s, many goods-carrying boats called burchi would have been seen transiting along the Bacchiglione River, headed to Venice, Padua and Battaglia Terme. Almost all the towns along the river had a harbor, taverns, stores and grocery shops. Here, a multitude of people who lived their lives in daily contact with the river, circulated: boatmen, horsemen (who pulled the boats using horses), innkeepers, traders, porters, smiths, fishermen, carpenters, and so on. Today, as our relationship with the environment has changed, so too has our perception of the rivers and their waters.

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The peaceful waters of the Sile

The Sile is the most important resurgence river in Veneto. Over the centuries, the constant flow rate and relative tranquillity of its waters have favoured river transport and led to the construction of numerous mills and harbours. The landscape along its banks was characterized by intense productive, commercial and manufacturing activity.The fertile countryside of the Marca was the cereal store for rich and populous Venice, and its banks became the preferred destination of the Venetian aristocracy for summer vacations.

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Ancient Crafts and Trades in the Venice’s mainland

The world of river navigation did not only consist of boatmen but comprised a whole series of professional figures, among whom: transporters, horsemen for pulling boats upstream, log drivers, gatekeepers, sand and gravel transporters, millers, and even innkeepers. Connected to all this of course was the world of boatbuilding, requiring very specific know-how that was more often than not jealously passed on from generation to generation as squeraroi (boat builders), caulkers (to make the boats water worthy) and makers of sails. This dynamic world strongly contrasted the more static one of farming.

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Videos

The video showed the inherited historical liquid streets in the mainland of Venice with a description of the Museum of River Navigation of Battaglia Terme, a small town of Battaglia, one of the most fascinating of inland Veneto. It was a commercial and strategic crossroads thanks to its position at the foot of the Euganean Hills, not far from the Lagoon (50 km), from Padua (13 km) and from the walled cities of Monselice and Este (respectively 7 and 16 km).
Eriberto Eulisse (Director of Civiltà dell’Acqua International Centre) explains the project “Venice’s Waterways: the Historic Network”. A project to promote sustainable tourism through digital itineraries along the historic waterways of Venice and a Global Network of Water Museums.

Interviews

Video Interview with Riccardo Cappellozza, co-founder of Museum of River Navigation in Battaglia Terme, and one of the last boatmen alive today
Video Interview with Franco Sandon, ex librarian of Battaglia Terme and inland navigation enthusiast, talks about the canals and trades directly and indirectly linked to inland navigation, a world today almost wholly lost
Video Interview with Lorenzo Questioni, ex river ferryman, who tells us about the fishability of the rivers and canals in the zone

SERs

Italian Fountains

Protection of public fountains and water, sustainable development and recycling are the key words of this project that is inaugurated in Treviso, “city of water”. An initiative of national significance: building a network between the Italian cities of the fountains, to enhance the good, controlled, economic and non-waste water.

YouInHerit Project

The project organized within the European project YouInHerit, involves youths in the realization of 5 digital itineraries, to promote a slow tourism to discover the traditional Venetian boating – in view of a functional relaunch of the ancients jobs linked to this through new tourism promotion strategies.

Love Your River

The “Love Yuor River” is an educational project, with the consortium “Acque Risorgive”, involving schools in the municipalities of Padua, Venice and Treviso. Good river requalification practices and eco-sustainable development of the areas located along the local waterways are at the center of the project.

Love The Water in Your Tap

The “Love The Water in Your Tap” is an educational project with “Consiglio di Bacino Laguna di Venezia”. Through laboratories and guided tours in the purification and treatment plants, students learn the importance of water, today very often wasted or even poisoned, as if we had forgotten how this mysterious substance is precious.

Eu.Wat.Her project

The European Waterways Heritage (Eu.Wat.Her) project aims to promote knowledge and rehabilitation of the cultural heritage of minor waterways and historic canals in Europe. Its objective is to develop new opportunities for eco-tourism and outdoor recreation as a driver for sustainable development.