In the countryside of Taglio di Po a tall chimney rises above the flat fields. From far off it marks the former pumping station of Ca’ Vendramin. According to the foundation that runs it, from 1903 to 1969 it was the main plant for the mechanical drainage of the Isola di Ariano, the island between two branches of the Po. Today it is the Museo Regionale della Bonifica, the Regional Land Reclamation Museum, one of the most telling sites of industrial archaeology in the Delta.
The story of the plant, from its design to the subsidence that stopped it, is told in the story devoted to Ca’ Vendramin. Here, what matters is what you can see.
A complex that has kept its shape
The complex has essentially kept its original layout. There is a double-T central block, with a workshop and a store. There is the chimney. And there are the houses where the machine crews lived. Work on the main building began on 13 September 1900 and it was tested and approved in November 1905. The bricks came from the Camisotti kiln at Santa Maria in Punta.
In the mid-1980s came the idea of giving the disused pumping station a new life. The Regione del Veneto established the Museo Regionale della Bonifica by a resolution of 17 October 1986. Restoration took place in 1991–1992 on all the buildings, respecting their original layout and features.
The rooms
The machine hall still holds the original pumping units, with the steam boilers and centrifugal pumps of the early 1900s. Visitors can also see the old workshop, which served the consortium’s plants and machines, and the historical archive of the land reclamation bodies that succeeded one another in the Delta.
The former boiler room has become a large conference hall, named after the engineer Antonio Zecchettini, who directed the works. The two former coal stores house the visitor centre, a café and a bookshop.
Who looks after it
The building and almost all the open land around it belong to the Italian State. The land reclamation consortium, which holds them under concession, has entrusted their management to the Fondazione Ca’ Vendramin, set up in 2009 and based in the former staff houses. Its founding members include the Regione del Veneto, the Provincia di Rovigo, the Po Delta Regional Park authority and the Consorzio di Bonifica Delta del Po.
The foundation does more than run the museum. It promotes research on the hydraulic and environmental problems of deltas and wetlands, and the complex is also home to the Laboratorio Internazionale Delta e lagune, an international laboratory for deltas and lagoons. The plant that for decades took water away from the land now helps people learn how to live with water.
