The Sacca degli Scardovari is the largest lagoon in the Po Delta. It is a sheet of brackish water enclosed between two branches of the river. At sunset the fishermen’s huts on stilts are mirrored in the water, and the landscape seems to hang suspended.
A lagoon born of Venice’s choices
This lagoon, too, is the child of Venetian decisions about the rivers. According to the Regione Veneto, it formed because three ancient branches of the Po, closed off by the Venetians, no longer carried sediment. Meanwhile the side branches kept stretching towards the sea.
In 1966 the sea broke through the embankment and flooded the land. Where the breach opened, the small Marina 70 harbour now stands.
The lagoon of the “pioci”
Life on the Sacca revolves around shellfish. Clams and mussels are farmed here; in dialect, mussels are called “pioci”. Since 2013 the Cozza di Scardovari has held PDO status (DOP in Italian), the EU’s protected designation of origin. It is produced in the Sacca and in the villages of Scardovari, Ca’ Mello and Santa Giulia, and it is the only Italian mussel farmed from native seed. According to Dissapore, the consortium brings together 14 cooperatives and around 1,500 members.
The little wooden houses on stilts, linked to the embankment by walkways, are used to process and store the catch. It is they that draw the lagoon’s outline.
The oasis reborn
A few kilometres away, between Barricata and Santa Giulia, lies the Oasi di Ca’ Mello. It grew up on the old Po di Camello branch, which flowed out here until the late 19th century. Its heart is about 30 hectares of relict marsh.
Until the 1960s the area was taken up by valli da pesca, the enclosed fishing lagoons of the Delta. After the waters were diverted in 1985, from 1990 it was returned to nature, with the return of the water and of the plants typical of wetlands.
Today short paths wind among reed beds and ponds. You walk slowly, listening to the rustle of the reeds, as far as the birdwatching tower. From up there the lagoon, the oasis and the sea read like a single great page of water, written by the river.
