Comacchio: Museo Delta Antico

Museums are great places to visit. All the more so in sweltering temperatures. Or when it’s raining. Today, it was the latter that took us to the museum … though, in all honesty, we would have gone there regardless of the weather as we had read that it was a gem. It did not disappoint.

Located in the heart of Comacchio, the museum is housed in the grand neoclassical building that was built to serve as a hospital … l’Ospedale degli infermi. Overlooking the canal, the building is a result of the papal restoration that took place in the latter part of the 18th century. The hospital went into service in 1814 and continued providing care until 1970.

Collection-wise, the museum is not large … 2,000+ artifacts according to the brochure. However, it covers a very wide time range that tells the story of the evolution of the Po Delta, and the role it played in trade and commerce from the time of the Etruscans, to the Romans, to the Middle Ages.

A large number of the exhibits is dedicated to Spina, the ancient Etruscan port city that was established around 525 BC … disappeared due to silting, political changes, and being sacked by the Gauls around 400 BC … resurfaced out of the marshes of the Po Delta some 2,000 years later during land reclamation projects in 1922.

Another area of the museum is dedicated to a Roman cargo vessel that was shipwrecked in the Po Delta sometime between 19-12 BC. Thanks to the oxygen-free environment in which the wreck lay, it was recovered in 1981 with artifacts that rarely survive the ages … wood, leather, vegetable fibers, and the like, as well as amphorae and lead ingots.

We enjoyed the museum and thought it was exceptionally well done. The only thing marring our visit … the noisy school groups … there were several that I’d say were 1st graders at best that had no interest in the exhibits whatsoever … some rolling around on the floor and throwing tantrums. Just a tad too young for a museum of this nature.

The info panels were in Italian and English, and the language or captions of the short, informative videos could be switched on demand. That was especially helpful for me.

There was also a bench where one could touch several of the archaeological artifacts … created for the visually impaired, but I enjoyed holding them in my hand as well. This was real stuff … not re-creations. Knowing that some of the pieces went as far back as the Etruscans, it was a unique opportunity to hold them … and wonder who, back then, had held the piece … and what they were doing as they did so.

(By the way … I didn’t do a very good job of always capturing the “age” of an artifact. Let’s just say that they were “very, very old.”Leggi altro