Comacchio and the Po Delta

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Ferrara, City Of The Renaissance, And Its Po Delta, Inscribed 1995 And Extended 1999), Covering The Lagoon Town Of Comacchio And The Po Delta Wetlands · Comacchio, Emilia-Romagna

A small brick town built on thirteen islands in a lagoon, connected by canals and bridges and living for a thousand years on eels, which arrive from the Sargasso Sea, are trapped in channels built for the purpose, and were marinated and tinned in a factory that is now the museum. The set piece is the Trepponti, a seventeenth-century bridge with five staircases meeting over a junction of canals, which is the kind of thing you build when water is the road. Around the town lie the lagoons of the Po delta: about a thousand square kilometres of shallow water, reed bed, sandbank and pine wood, and one of the most important wetlands in the Mediterranean, with thousands of flamingos on it and something like three hundred bird species through the year. It is flat to the horizon, it is best seen from a bicycle or a boat, and it has almost nothing that counts as a sight, which is precisely why the people who come here bring binoculars rather than a list.

Via Agatopisto 2, Comacchio, Emilia-Romagna, 44022, Italy

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the town, the canals, the Trepponti and the cycle paths are public and never close. The Manifattura dei Marinati and the town museum keep municipal hours with a weekly closing day and shorter winter opening. LAGOON BOAT TRIPS ARE SEASONAL, running roughly spring to autumn from the Stazione Foce and cancelled in wind. The Abbey of Pomposa keeps state-museum hours and is on the free first Sunday scheme. Birdwatching hides are open ground.

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