The ruins of the Casone dei Sette Morti (literally: Farmhouse of the Seven Dead People) are beyond the Petroli Canal, which from the sea runs up to Marghera.
To the east of this and of the Campanella Canal, where Motte di Volpego is located (a large rock of land rather than an island), you are not too far away from the entrance to the Malamocco harbour, that cuts through the Alberoni from San Pietro in Volta, and the general feeling is that of being in the middle of the sea. The weather is fine, the sky is clear, along the canal you every so often see a tanker pass by and you know that, beneath your feet, at a few meters’ distance, there is a galley, all in one piece, 38 metres in length and five in width, the queen of navigation in the 14th century. A couple of months ago they drained the surrounding area and it was brought back to light; it has been studied and photographed, being the only complete representation which has managed to reach you; it seemed like an enormous fish that had stranded, a unique sight.
The area is that of San Marco in Boccalana, which up to the 14th century had been a stable monastic settlement: a first oratorium already existed in the year 1000 and the dedication to the Patron Saint of Venice must have had a geopolitical meaning, some sort of boundary and possession stone. Ernesto Canal, in conducting some researches towards the end of the 60s, identified findings that proved that it had been visited up to the 16th century, when the island was abandoned and converted into a mass burial place, after the 1348 plague. But, above all, he discovered the wreck lying on the bed of the sea, the wreck that this year has resurfaced for three weeks. Water may have no memory, but it knows how to preserve it.
This is history, whereas the Casone dei Sette Morti is a legend and, further to the north, as you approach the Lagone, in the Sora Valley and in the Bon Valley, the Casone Valle Zappa is 20th century industrial archaeology, white and red, in a Dutch style, with a penthouse behind and a lighthouse on one side.
This is the lagoon to the south of Venice, whose boundary line is marked by Chioggia. Beyond that point is the Po Delta. Up to the 50s, the Casone Sette Morti was a bit more than just ruins. One of the best books written about Venice is by an Englishman, James Morris, it is called Venise (published by Faber&Faber) and was first published in 1960. The last edition dates back to about ten years ago, but in the meantime the author had changed sex, and signed herself Jan Morris. James or Jan, as it may be, is one of the most interesting travelling (and not only, since the Pax Britannica trilogy of the English empire represents a cornerstone on the subject) writers of the 20th century, and his/her double life, as a prolific father and exemplary husband up to the age of fifty, and thereafter as a fulfilled woman with no regrets, is one of the most incredible that one can ever come across. The story of the Sette Morti, which had already fascinated D’Annunzio in the “Fede senza cigno” whereby a short gothic story was based on the subject, is also related in a book which has just been published, “Navigar in laguna. Fra isole, fiabe e ricordi” (“Sailing across the Lagoon. Amongst Islands, Fairytales and Memories”, published by Mare di Carta), by Guido Fuga and Lele Vinello, which is a nice and practical book for travellers, full of information and interesting details. But Morris’ book is more spectacular and, after all, each writer enriches legends in his own way. As I mentioned, the casone is now only a rocky projection emerging at low tide, right in the middle of the Fondi dei Sette Morti.
It takes about an hour to reach the place from Pellestrina, but you need to find somebody who will take you; there are no bricolas signalling the canals, fishermen’s memories are vague and for many there is little to choose among ruins. Celeste is a small restaurant overlooking the sea; the food is good there, the local people go there regularly, if you are patient and are willing to have a chat, in the end you are bound to find a guide.
Other casones, Cason Bombae, Cason Val in Pozzo, Cason Val Grande, Cason Cornio Nuovo and Cornio Vecchio are scattered in this part of the lagoon, names whose meaning is lost in antiquity, leaving behind reference to nicknames, personalities, places… During the fishing season, people lived here: these were their operation bases: people eat, slept, cleaned and repaired nets and boats, and in turns returned ashore to sell their fish. The Sette Morti one was similar, even though nobody knows what its previous name was; it dates back to centuries ago.
The story goes that there were six fishermen, plus a young boy in charge of cooking and of dry-land tasks. One day, as they were getting back from fishing, a corpse got caught in their fish-traps. They placed it aft and decided that later on they would take it to the Ponte della Paglia, in Venice, where drowned people were identified. As they got off the boat, the young boy saw the body lying there and asked “Why don’t you invite him too? The meal is ready and there’s enough for an extra person”. Venetians have morbid tastes for jokes. “He’s as deaf as a post ”, they replied, “He’s deathly tired. Go and give him a shout”. The boy went and got back. “It’s useless. He doesn’t hear me”. “Go back to the boat, give him a shake, tell him we can’t waste our time, we are already at table, we are hungry, we have hard work to do”. The boy went all the way back from the casone to the boat, then he reappeared and started serving the “polenta”. “He’s woken up, he says he will be right over”. At the casone, when a week later another boat moored, they found seven dead people around a table and a young boy going nuts.
At the beginning of the 14th century the property of the area beneath Brondolo, where the Brenta flows into the sea, was transferred from the House of Este to the Serenissima, and the latter immediately realised that, had it not taken certain measures with respect to the course of the rivers with the territorial logic which took into account their influence over the lagoon, the risks for the latter, and hence for Venice, would be extremely serious. They started by damming the Dolo, then continued by cutting the course of the Brenta, they tried to reverse the course of the Piave and in the meantime the Sile occupied its bed…
Especially after the cutting at Porto Viro, in 1604, they harnessed the Po, which with its grains of Fornaci, Tramontana, Levante and Scirocco represented a risk for the lagoon, it silted harbours up, it altered environmental balances and threatened material goods. Three centuries later, as Piero Bevilacqua recalled in his “Venezia e le acque” (published by Donzelli), in observing “throughout the territories which evolutionary marks had been left on the coast line by the intense activity of that grain of the Po and how they had changed after its deflection”, you perfectly realise “how ruinous the absence of such a timely device as the cut of Porto Viro would have been for the whole apparatus of the Veneto lagoon”.
“There was a new intervention on the Po only six years ago”, I am told by Daniele from the Park Board. “Its course was diverted by five to six hundred meters, thus providing it with a new bed. All the lands extending between Ca’ Vendramin and Pila are the result of the Porto Viro cut, in actual fact of the creation of a canal uniting the waters”.
One month ago, exactly at Ca’ Vendramin, the oldest water lifting plant in the Polesine area, between the Gnocca Po and the Goro Po, which is now the seat of the Reclamation Museum, the first Naturalistic Tourism Exhibition was held, and the Veneto Regional Park of the Po Delta, founded three years ago, presented its own environmental and economical improvement projects for the area.
The Delta is like a triangle on the Adriatic Sea: the Adige river represents its northern border and the Goro Po its southern border. It is a maze of valleys and water courses, of loops and mouths, of lighthouses, trees and mists, marsh harriers and kingfishers, boundless beds of reeds and red herons. Scano Boe represents its farthest sandy boundary: there, where the Po ends and the sea begins, with this old couple, husband and wife, belonging to the Fishermen Cooperative Union, acting as eel keepers: they are their ultimate custodian and guardians, in this large wooden house with bunk beds, a battery-operated TV set; “the only current is that of the river”, says he smiling, the cellphone speaking Croatian, a calendar displaying attractive pinups wearing very short shirts, that a rollicking fisherman has presented them with and that she condescendingly tolerates.
“At his age…”, she says with a seraphic expression. They have only recently lost a son, and they spend five months a year here. It is the highest point of the Delta, two metres above sea level; thin reed posts instead of the bricolas, because the riverbed changes continuously and the Basson lagoon facing it has 30 centimetres of water: you can cross it on foot, but by boat you might get stranded. Years ago, the Pila lighthouse stood where now is Pila itself: a small harbour, boats, 400 inhabitants and a bank, and this shows you how the plain has expanded.
In "Veneto Felice" Comisso has related the story of how the beds of reeds gathered and it seemed as if you had arrived “in a Malayan island”. He had also arrived here, where “the Po was left without current and the waves that silently broke against the beach gushed back against it”. It is not necessary to mention the name of Porto Tolle to remind you of floods and drainages, pains and disasters.
Today you can admire the Flower and Vegetable Experiment Station on the Po at Tramontana, 20 thousand square metres of protected crops, 25 hectares for experimentation, micropropagation laboratories, non-interred farming units. In the loop of Scardovari, the Polesine Fishermen Cooperative Union reports annual sales of 70 billion, it employs 1700 fishermen, it operates on 650 hectares of lagoon held in concession, it manually picks 9 thousand genuine clams a year. In short, the area is full of industrial initiatives, of work aimed at environmental improvement and awakening, as well as ecologic protection. However you will understand that, as far as the Veneto lagoon is concerned, over the centuries it has been nature that has laid down the law. With the exception of Adria and Loreo, here you will not find convents and defensive works, the cross and the sword, the harbours and the villas, trade and pleasures … Here, for centuries, it has only been a matter of survival, a damned life, an inevitable destiny. The extraordinary richness of flora and fauna, the unexpected interchanging of landscapes, the freezing winters that made it impossible to move, the burning hot summers that made it difficult to breath, everything weighed heavily and conspired for you to feel as if you were part of a picture but not a presence.
The beds of reeds as you walk through, or the lagoons in which you get lost, seem to say “Our life is better without you”. One of the most unpleasant novels by Bassani, “L’airone” (“The Heron”), is set in the Delta area, and it does not really matter whether it is the Ferrara or the Venetian Delta. All that matters is that feeling of exhaustion, of dereliction, of surrender, that emanates from it. The lawyer Limentani, who had gone shooting, in the end will not shoot anyone else but himself.