Aqueduct of Ferrara: Attraction informations
Ferrara’s history has always been connected to water.
Ferrara is the only city in the Emilia Romagna’s region not to be founded by the Romans. The territory where it stands, was a swampland where living conditions were considered to be unhealthy. For this reason, Ferrara (as Ravenna) is not built along the long Via Emilia, while most of the main towns in the region do.
The city was built in the 9th century and was connected to the river Po through several water canals, soon becoming an essential economic base for commercial routes, as was the nearby city of Comacchio. One of these canals, Po di Volano, skims nowadays Ferrara’s town centre.
The first true modern aqueduct was built in 1890 and its waters flew from the nearby city of Castelfranco Emilia. The one used today is different and more efficient, but the old one was working until the end of the 80s.
The 20th-century tank
The route that the water flow follows to reach Ferrara is decorated with different hydraulic works, some of them magnificent. One of them is the tank that still stands not far away from the city centre and that was built between 1930 and 1932.
The engineer in charge of the project was
Carlo Savonuzzi, who at the time was an employee of the Municipality of Ferrara and a close collaborator of the podesta of Ravenna. Savonuzzi was engaged in other construction works in the city, like the
sports stadium Paolo Mazza and the
Museum of Natural History.
He worked following the wishes of the city’s government with the intent of giving a new and modern air to the city whilst keeping a special consideration to the past Estense period. He therefore joined the so-called “
20th-century addition” that comprises all the new buildings of those days.
The tank stands in the middle of
Rione Giardino. Its structure is totally done in reinforced concrete and recalls the architectural structures found in masterpieces of
Perugino and
Raffaello, for example the Marriages of the Virgin.
The building is almost 40 meters high and decorated by
two great lateral stairs. The whole structure is embellished by a
monumental fountain decorating its base, displaying an allegoric figure of the river Po and its streams. The sculpture was designed and projected by
Arrigo Minerbi.
Poplars surround the whole structure, as a symbol of the presence of the
Heliades nymphs, sisters of
Phaeton who, thrown to the earth by
Jupiter, created the river with his fall. The upper side of the tank, with its dodecagon shape, can contain up to
2500 cubic meters of water and was probably the biggest one in Italy when it was built.
As mentioned before, the tank is no longer connected to the main aqueduct. To avoid such an important building being neglected, several of its internal rooms have been requalified, and are used by engineers and technicians for the control of the structure. These rooms are nowadays used for different purposes.
The monumental Aqueduct of Ferrara can easily be reached by bike, as almost all the main highlights of the city, and stands not far away from the city walls, which have been transformed in a promenade frequently used by the Ferrarese people.
