From Trieste to Milan - Italy's fascinating water worlds

 

Director: Stefan Sternd, Camera: Stefan Sternad

 

Production: 3sat & ipFILM

 

Documentary film: 50:30 min./2018

 

 

Italy's waterways are diverse, full of protected animal and plant species and surprises.

 

 

The film also embarks on a historical journey through time from the Reschen Pass through South Tyrol along the Adige to the former Bolzano port of Branzoll in the direction of Verona. One of the most interesting waterways in Italy takes us to Lake Maggiore, where the Tecino river has its source.

 

 

This river and the Navilio Grande were once used to transport the marble for Milan Cathedral by ship to the front door of the church. It comes from the Candoglia quarry and is still used today

 

 

"Our cathedral will remain a building site forever. Funnily enough, civil engineers predicted the same thing back in the 18th and 19th centuries," says Francesco Canali, head of the Milan Cathedral workshop.

 

 

The journey across the River Mincio takes us directly into the history of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In 1815, after the Congress of Vienna, the Habsburgs founded the Kingdom of Lombardy - Veneto as part of their vast empire.

The Habsburgs invested huge sums in extensive canal constructions and thus developed the waterways of northern Italy into an entire transport network.

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Trieste became the main harbour of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Monarchy when the harbour of Venice increasingly lost importance in the middle of the 19th century.

 

 

From Lake Garda, we continue our journey via the Mincio to the Po, which takes a leisurely and wide course. It also flows past Ferrara, a remote Renaissance city. Despite the large and well-maintained lock systems, there has been no shipping traffic here for a long time.

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A few kilometres south of Chioggia, the Adige, Brenta and Po rivers flow into the Adriatic Sea. This river delta is now a huge nature reserve.