The marshes of Salento Lecce before rehabilitation

The marshes of Salento Lecce before rehabilitation


Antonio Bruno *

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In Roman times, the peninsula of Salento in Lecce was surrounded by swamps. Today, after rehabilitation, which is the drainage of wetlands designed to remove malaria, was just the surface of marshes that were in our territory. To continue the discussion began with Dr. Jolanda De Nola on the morning of January 9, 2011 at the Colonial Visciglia which is near the town of Lecce in Salento Strudà of which seems to have made a halt Octavian Augustus, on his return from Albania, before entering the city of Lupiae (Lecce), I will try to answer the following questions: But how was the Salento Lecce swamp? Where were they and how extended the zone is today called "transitional water ecosystems?

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I could write this note because I could read a book written by Raffaele Pareto on the swamps of Salento in Lecce.

The Marquis Raffaele Pareto was a man who has had experience in France during the political exile because he married Maria Mazzini here Métenier, of French nationality. He returned in Liguria in the early years of 1850 and certainly had already established in Liguria in 1854 because he was awarded that year, a Genoa hit by an epidemic of cholera, a silver medal "for outstanding services rendered during the invasion of cholera-morbus last year 1854 ".

It 'been experienced in the field of irrigation and drainage and for this reason in 1861 he obtained the honorary title of "engineer graduate" from the Ministry of Education, in the name of Vittorio Emanuele II. It 'was then officially appointed by the Ministry to study a law for land reclamation. Finally, from 1860 to 1867 he was called to the direction of the "Journal Agronomist Architect and Engineer."

He wrote a report in 1865 after a visit to the provinces where he worked on the Salento Lecce.

The description covers both the swamps that are the immediate interior of the Adriatic coast that stretched for more than 160 km from Monopoli Otranto with particular emphasis to the description of the swamps of Brindisi. The marshes of Brindisi have been described both from a passage from an epistle to Caesar, Cicero.

I carry a description that makes the walls of a strip of marshland that extended from Brindisi via San Cataldo di Lecce and Otranto to come up. The strip is 65 km long and 10 wide! To give you an idea of the way by sea to San Cataldo Lecce is 12 kilometers! Capita in that situation towards the Salento Lecce in 1865? In addition, the Marchese Raffaele Pareto observed that one-twentieth of that area was cultivated.

To translate into numbers we are talking about an area of 650 square kilometers of wetlands. One thing's huge! The 650 square miles only 32 square kilometers were cultivated. Translated hectares, 65 thousand hectares of the band from Lecce to Otranto were cultivated only 3 thousand! Do you understand the enormity of the data that you've read? The situation at the edge of survival for the population at that time lived in our territory. Also I wonder and I ask you: would you go on vacation in an area like the one I just described?

The situation in 1865 was particularly serious because the Pareto in his annotation notes that before then the surface was reduced to a swamp was cultivated and bore witness to the presence of wild vines and olive trees.

The Pareto is also a description of the marshes between the cape of Leuca and Gallipoli on the Ionian Sea to the coast where the beach gives way to high.

Here are the swamps of Breast Ugento and the Porta San Giovanni, then the swamps of south-east of Gallipoli is known as the mistral that Li Fogg called White Marsh.

Finally, speaking of the marshes of Porto Cesareo.

Also in the same report describes the Pareto depressions without drainage occurring in the inner part of the peninsula of Salento. About this the Pareto writes: "Which (ed depressions) are furnished to the people of unhealthy living in large and small towns and countryside." Quote of the swamp to the north of Sombrin Supersano.

The report of prof. Pareto is very enlightening for us who now live in a peninsula that has no memory of what happened just 145 years ago.

The events that have witnessed the passage from the Salento Lecce land full of marshes and unhealthy to "Salentu, lu sule, lu lu jentu tides" land of international tourism and hospitality of our days, have played a key role of the Consortia of Reclamation and Ugento Li and Arneo Fogg.

The inspiration for writing this note gave it to me, Dr. Jolanda De Nola, a dear friend of Ugento, which by the Consortium of Reclamation asked me, like everyone else, explanations of what they were and that deal.

I told him that the first two decades of the twentieth century, despite government claims that there was also a Ugento, brought no solution to the problem of the marshes, while becoming increasingly common malaria and unemployment. I told him that between 1924 and 1932 cases of malaria recorded in only Ugento ranged between 1071 and 2416, a total population of about 5000 inhabitants. Did you know that Yolanda did not know anything about the history of his grandparents? Nothing! Forgotten! Just as they had forgotten it was the Salento Lecce before 1865, when the Marquis Pareto noticed that before the Marshes of us must have been growing due to the presence of wild vines and olive groves.

To avoid repeating the same mistakes we must do so to continue the action of the Reclamation Consortia Ugento and Li Fogg and Arneo!



* Agronomist (expert in urban and regional diagnostic entitled International University Master's Degree in Diagnostic IMD Urban and Regional Urban and Territorial Diagnostics).





Bibliography



Serena Pesenti, Raffaele Pareto (1812-1882). The contribution to the debate on art and restoration in the late nineteenth century Italian culture.

Alessandro Melazzini, Vilfredo Pareto tenacino "sir charge" of the Iron Company in Valdarno. Thesis

Raffaele Pareto, on the reclamation, irrigation risaje and the Kingdom of Italy. Milan 1865

Cosimo De Giorgi, Geological and Hydrographic Description of the Province of Lecce.

Association Terre Mediterranean basins Ugento

Mino Lezzi, The activity of the Consortium for Rehabilitation of Ugento in the years 1927 to 1937. Thesis