(representative attribute of the values expressed under criterion v)
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In 1999, the inscription of the Ferrara World Heritage site was extended to include the Po Delta Cultural Landscape (Decision 23 COM VIII.C.2), assuming the designation “Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta.”
Cultural landscape: water and settlements
In 1999 the Po Delta was recognised as a cultural landscape, the outcome of a long interaction between natural dynamics and human interventions. In the Ferrara area, agriculture has historically been linked to water management: settlements have grown up along riverbeds for reasons of elevation (better drainage) and because, in the pre-industrial age, waterways were the main arteries of the territory. Marco Antonio Pasi’s Carta dei Ducati estensi (1571) conveys this logic with striking immediacy: villages and Delizie follow the watercourses, adapting to the local relief and foreshadowing the productive structure that would consolidate in the centuries to come.
The Great Este Transformation (1450–1580)
From as early as the rule of Niccolò III (1402–1441), the Este family had initiated land reclamation and the enhancement of the territory of Ferrara by granting uncultivated and marshy areas free of charge to leading loyal families. Under the dukes of Este, hydraulic policy became a matter of systematic planning.
Under Borso d’Este (who ruled from 1450 to 1471), this policy was institutionalised and the first large-scale land reclamation schemes were launched (such as in the Polesine di Casaglia and the Diamantina area), laying the foundations for renewed agricultural development. The process gathered pace under Ercole I and later under Ercole II (who ruled from 1534 to 1559), and reached its peak under Alfonso II (who ruled from 1559 to 1597), during whose reign the Grande Bonificazione was carried out between the Po Grande, the Po di Volano and the Copparo valley.
Under the guidance of the foremost hydraulic technicians and engineers of the time (including Giovanni Battista Aleotti), a complex network of drainage canals was dug to channel the waters towards key outlet systems. Among the most important works is the Chiavica dell’Abate, fitted with porte vinciane (Vincian gates), which controlled a large part of the hydraulic discharge.
The outcome of this hydraulic engineering was twofold: the stable drainage of the soils and the gradual bringing of new land under cultivation, which profoundly reshaped the Este agrarian landscape.
Traces still legible in the landscape
Water-based spatial planning shapes not only fields, but also routes and centres. Along the crest of the embankments runs a network of unpaved roads serving work and oversight; along canals and riverbeds stand the Delizie, outposts of ducal power closely connected to the hydraulic network and reclamation systems. Large woodland areas of historical origin, such as the Gran Bosco della Mesola and the Bosco di Santa Giustina, also bear witness to the ancient environmental mosaic. Although modern interventions have further intensified land reclamation and fostered agricultural mechanisation, the Este layout remains legible: alignments, embankments, canals and settlements make the Delta an “open-air manual” of historic hydraulic engineering applied to the transformation of marshland into an agricultural landscape.
Closely linked to the great reclamation of the Po Delta landscape, the Delizie were an important manifestation of ducal power beyond the city, allowing the image of the Este dynasty to be replicated across the territory.
They are extra-urban residences that fulfilled a range of economic, political and strategic functions and, above all, roles of representation and control along a territory that was by its very nature mutable, and therefore to be monitored both in order to protect it and to extract from it the greatest possible productivity.
La bella terra che siede sul fiume
L. Ariosto, Orlando furioso
Paradises of magnificence or gardens of an Eden reconstructed with symmetrical precision, the Delizie were places of sensory delight (often the setting for hunting activities) and strongholds of an agricultural economy, whose towers were used to cast the gaze beyond the boundaries of the park.
Palace complexes, villas, fortresses and courts often rose close to a watercourse, in a landscape that at the time was traversed by a network of navigable routes, sometimes busier than the paths. These were magnificent buildings that shone like mirages visible from a considerable distance, with their coloured plasterwork, their walls and crenellations – in the case of the Mesola complex – embellished with green and yellow glazed terracotta.
True towns gathered around the stately palace, made up of courtyards, gardens, porticos, and laboratories; offices occupied by inspectors, cashiers, and accountants continually engaged in managing the properties, planning restorations, and supervising the workforce… and also warehouses, stables, stud farms, and granaries; the oven, the cellar, and the enclosures for animals, sometimes even exotic animals—a leopard, for instance—as in the Barco di Ferrara.
Today many Delizie, in both public and private ownership, have been largely restored and converted to museum, cultural or productive uses, once again playing a distinctive role as key attractors within the wider area.