The Polesine is a land made by rivers. The Adige and the Po built it, flooded it and redrew it for thousands of years. The Museo dei Grandi Fiumi, the Museum of the Great Rivers, in Rovigo tells exactly this story: how people lived, worked and traded in a watery landscape that never stood still.
Since 2001 the museum has occupied the restored rooms of the former Olivetan monastery of San Bartolomeo. Its collections, however, have a longer history. From 1971 they were kept in the archaeological museum of the Centro Polesano di Studi Storici, Archeologici, Etnografici, a local research centre, and from 1978 in the Museo Civico delle Civiltà in Polesine. The new museum was founded in 1998 to house them. The route spans more than 3,500 years, from the Bronze Age to the Renaissance, with selected objects from the modern era and the 20th century.
Amber, bronze and glass
The journey begins with amber. A multimedia room evokes the myth of Phaethon and the Heliades, linked to the Eridanus, the river often identified with the Po. Beside the myth stand the facts: at Campestrin di Grignano Polesine, archaeologists have found the oldest amber-working site south of the Baltic region.
Next come the Bronze Age villages: Canàr, Larda di Gavello and above all Frattesina, which between the 12th and 10th centuries BC was a craft centre on the routes linking central and northern Europe with the eastern Mediterranean. The section closes with an enlarged replica of the Trundholm sun disc, found in Denmark.
The horseman and the Attic vases
At the centre of the Iron Age room stands the Knight of Gavello, an Etruscan-Po Valley bronze statuette of the 5th century BC. A little further on is the Etruscan cemetery of Balone. Tomb 1 yielded an Attic red-figure kylix showing Hades seated and an Attic krater with Peleus seizing Thetis.
The Roman section centres on the villa of Chiunsano, between Ficarolo and Gaiba: glass, votive figurines, surgical instruments and four fragments of military diplomas. There is also a groma, the Roman surveyors’ instrument, and a replica of the Tabula Peutingeriana, the great Roman road map.
From the Ostrogothic lady to majolica
The Middle Ages open with the rich grave goods of an Ostrogothic woman, known as the Lady of Chiunsano. The Renaissance is set against a stage backdrop that recreates the façade of Palazzo Roverella. In the ceramics room, a polychrome piece of 1540 by Francesco Xanto Avelli stands out, telling the story of Hero and Leander.
Many of these sets are the work of Gabbris Ferrari, an artist and stage designer born in Rovigo in 1937: the last room shows 40 of his sketches for the displays. Finally, in the cloisters, Roman funerary stelae, altars and inscriptions see visitors out. Among them is an altar dedicated to Apollo.
