Re: Milan's canal (river) area
- From: Giovanni Drogo <drogo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 18:52:10 +0200
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Martin wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po_River
I have no time of correcting it on line, so it goes here ...
The Po (Latin: Padus, Italian: Padania) is a river that flows 652
In Italian Po is the river, and "padano" is the adjective, like in
"pianura padana" (Po plain, below), "grana padano" (sort of cheese
similar to parmesan) or maybe "Gazzettino Padano" (this was the name of
the local radio news program in Lombardy since ages). Padania is not the
name of the river, but a geographical term more or less equivalent to
"pianura padana" ... now very popular with Bossi's Lega (political
movement), and not with his opponents.
The vast valley around the Po is called Pianura Padana and is so
Living into it you do not realize it's a valley (and not only because of
the fog, you just think of an infinite flat. But if you climb to any of
the 1000 m high mountains (pre-Alps) north of Bergamo in a clear day,
you can see the Appennines at the other end.
It goes through many important Italian towns, including Turin (Torino)
and (indirectly) Milan (Milano), in Lombardy. It is connected to Milan
through a net of channels called navigli, which Leonardo da Vinci
helped design.
The relationships between Po and Milano are extremely weak (*), and the
quoted navigation links (should those "channels" not be "canals" in
English ? or was it the wiki written by Schiaparelli :-) ?) were never
designed/used as such and are rather indirect.
There were rumours that in Roman times a canal called Vettabbia
(Vectabilis) was used to navigate downstream Lambro to Po. However the
Navigli were mainly used to connect Lake Maggiore via Ticino to Milan
(the way the marbles of the Duomo did), or Lake Como (Lecco branch) via
Adda to Milan. The Naviglio Pavese goes downstream to Pavia into Ticino,
and that's the closest point to the Po, but I've never heard of a lot of
traffic on it. Barge traffic was mainly local passengers, or, before the
canals were degraded to mere irrigation watercourses, sand used in
constructions.
During the fascist regime there was a plan to build a much larger canal
from Milan to Cremona to connect to Po. Looking at the Piano Regolatore
of the time (urban planning chart) looked impressive, but works were
never started because of WWII, only a little stretch from Po to Cremona
was built. However a park area (and metro station) in Milan is still
called "Porto di Mare" (sea port) because the terminal of the canal had
to be built there.
(*) there was a pun by Prodi (who has been born in Reggio Emilia, "low"
padan plain, what is called 'la Bassa', lit. "the low") about Bossi
(born in hilly Varese), when he said the latter had never gone frog
fishing.
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