The Torre dell’Abate (Abbot’s Tower), built during the reign of Alfonso II d’Este, was originally conceived as one of the main hydraulic works designed to manage the Grande Bonificazione Ferrarese, the vast drainage scheme which, between 1566 and 1580, profoundly transformed the landscape and territorial organisation of the eastern part of the duchy.
The sluice was soon incorporated into the walled enclosure (Barco) that marked out the Mesola estate over a length of 12 kilometres.
Equipped with five barrel-vaulted lock chambers, it was fitted with an equal number of porte vinciane, an ingenious system of gates that opened automatically at low tide, allowing the waters from the drainage canals of the great reclamation to flow towards the Adriatic, and closed at high tide to prevent salt water from entering the reclaimed area.
Its hydraulic efficiency, however, was short-lived, as the area was soon silted up by the rapid advance of the coastline following the Taglio di Porto Viro (1599). Alfonso II’s territorial project, opposed by Venice, came to an abrupt halt and the enclosed area was never occupied by urban structures, but instead served as a hunting reserve.
The above-ground structure, built in the seventeenth century, consists of a block with a through-passage hall and recessed short façades, surmounted by a lookout turret for monitoring the surrounding territory.
Torre Abate is owned by the State Property Agency, while the seven hectares of land around it belong to the Municipality of Mesola; in the 1980s this area was artificially re-flooded in order to recreate the original landscape context of the sluice.