Pontine Marshes
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The Pontine Marshes (Agri Pontini; Agro Pontino in Italian) is a former marsh zone in the Latium Region of Central Italy, southeast of Rome, that forms a low tract of land varying in breadth between the Voiscian Mountains and the sea from 10 to 16 miles, and extending northwest to southeast from Velletri to Terracina by the Tyrrhenian Sea, from which they are separated by sand dunes. The area amounts to approximately 775 km². The Roman Via Appia crosses the marshes.
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[edit] History
[edit] Roman times
In ancient days this low tract was fertile and well-cultivated, and contained several prosperous cities—Suessa Pometia, Ulubrae perhaps the modern Cisterna, and others[1]). Pliny reports that the Volsci created a blossoming landscape there around 500 BCE. In 367 BCE, the Romans successfully defeated the Volsci, but they lost the fruitful area in the following centuries. Because of the large need for wood for ship-building, as well as for kilns and the Roman water-heating systems, the trees on the mountain slopes were systematically cut down, with resultant erosion.
The three rivers Sisto, Uffente and Amazone changed their beds continuously and each storm surge from the sea accumulated water, so that the rivers flowed backwards into the interior. In the south the country was below sea level by up to 40cm. The tropical Anopheles mosquito, carrier of malaria, transferred its blood parasite to the local mosquito species Anopheles messeae; the district far beyond the actual moorland became deadly by the end of the Republican period.
Attempts to drain the marshes were made by Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BC, when he constructed the Via Appia through them (the road having previously followed a devious course at the foot of the Volscian mountains); further attempts at draining the marshes were made at various times during the Roman period. All plans assumed that the water from the deepest part of the moorland had to be collected, in order to let it flow off to sea. Since no sufficient pumping capacities were available at that time, the plans proved technologically impossible. A canal ran through the Pontine Marshes parallel to the road, and for some reason that is not altogether clear it was used in preference to the road during the Augustan period. The Roman Emperor Trajan and the Ostrogoth Theodoric attempted drainage projects to render the land workable, but failed. Trajan repaired the Via Appia, and Theodoric did the same some four hundred years later, but in the middle ages it had fallen into disrepair.
Popes Boniface VIII, Martin V, Sixtus V, and Pius VI all attempted to solve the problem, the last-named reconstructing the road. The difficulty arises from the lack of declivity in the soil: some parts that are no less than 10 miles from the coast are barely above sea-level, though they are separated from the sea by a series of sand-hill former dunes, now covered with forest, which rise at some points over 100 feet above sea-level. Springs also rise in the district, and the problem is further complicated by the flood-water and solid matter brought down by the mountain torrents, which choke the channels made.
In 1561 Pope Pius IV employed the services of the mathematician Rafael Bombelli, who had gained a reputation as a hydraulic engineer in reclaiming marshland in the Val di Chiana in the Tuscan Apennines, but the project also came to naught [1]. The ambitious Sixtus V too made unsuccessful attempts at reclamation of the area, and died of malaria after a visit to the Pontine Marshes.
[edit] 18th century
On February 17, 1787, Goethe visited the region with his painter-friend Tischbein. He reports in his book, "The Italian Journey," that they "have never seen so bad an appearance as this in Rome." Goethe became interested in the dewatering attempts, after observing that it is "a large and extensive task." He probably used this image in this scene in his "Faust II", Act V: "A marsh extends along the mountain-chain, That poisons what so far I’ve been achieving; Were I that noisome pool to drain, 'Twould be the highest, last achieving. Thus space to many millions I will give. Where, though not safe, yet free and active they may live."
[edit] 19th century
Near the end of the 19th Century, a Prussian officer, Major Fedor Maria von Donat (1847–1919) had an idea; he would build a channel that followed mountains at their base, cutting a sand dune at the level of Terracina. This would collect the water flowing from the mountain before it reached the bottom. The water collected with the canal system would then be pumped into the Mediterranean. The electricity needed to power the canal system would be collected through dams in the mountains with hydro-electric power plants. The German patent office patented the project under the number 17,120. He wanted to dry out the marshes within a 5 year time span.
Donat published his idea in Rome and Berlin, and succeeded in gaining the attention of Emil Rathenau, the general manager of AEG in Berlin. Rathenau saw market potential for electric investments, so he and some industrials in Berlin as well as private financiers created the "Pontine Syndicate Ltd." in 1900. 70 million gold marks were set aside for the project. One of the conditions was that the Italians would have to spend a similar amount of money on the project.
In 1898, Fedor von Donat parted from his position as Bataillionscommander and moved to Rome with his family. There he lobbied the government for his project, four large landowners, financial circles and the Vatican. He leased 240 acres of marsh near Terracina and put out the model farm, "Tenuta Ponte Maggiore." With the help of ancient Egyptian-type waterwheels pulled by three oxen, he was able to prove that the moorland had a high soil quality of over 70 points, and this proved that three harvests per year were possible. He protected his 80 workers from malaria with a daily dose of chinin. He invited Roman correspondents to a press conference on his property. In 1902, in large German newspapers, as well as foreign papers, long articles about the project were written. They often carried a sense of national pride about the development project. (see Bierbaum , Otto Julius, "Eine empfindsame Reise mit dem Automobil", Berlin 1903, page 194). Donat argued above all for the extermination of malaria in the surrounding countryside of the capital. Malaria prevented the expansion of Rome to south, which would lead to a new province for Italy without a colonial war. The urbanization of the marshes could prevent 200,000 Italians from emigration. Around the year 1900, one could count less than 1000 inhabitants for a coastal region larger than 700km². By a law passed in 1899, the proprietors are bound to arrange for the safe outlet of the water from the mountains, keep the existing canals open, and reclaim the district exposed to inundation, within a period of twenty-four years. The sum of 280,000 has been granted towards the expense by the government. Donat’s plan failed. This time it was not the technical inadequacy as with the predecessors, but political deliberations stood in the way of the project. The liberal government hesitated and gave the north preference, where in the Po-area large marshes needed to be dried out. The violent resistance of the four large property owners resulted from the necessary expropriation and leasing of a large part of their marsh country to the German syndicate. The co-financer, the Banca Commerciale in Milan delayed to start the task on the swamp. Donat, who’s lobbying had operated on his own funds, exhausted his wife’s fortune of 75,000 gold marks by 1903. Unsuccessful, he returned to Germany. The Pontine Syndicate was dissolved on September 4, 1914. With it, a premature but bold attempt at a transnational investment to gain more land ended.
[edit] 20th century
The Pontine Marshes were finally drained and reclaimed in works begun in 1928 under the responsibility of the Consorzio della Bonifica di Latina, a semi-governmental corporation of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. The government drained the marshes, cleared vegetation, and settled several hundred families in standardized 2-story podere of blue stucco with tile roofs. Each settler was assigned such a farmhouse, an oven, a plough, a stable, a horse and 40 hectares of land. The project, constantly referred to in terms of battle, was a huge public relations boost for Mussolini, fulfilling his long-term belief in the “rural vocation of the Italian people” and triumphing over nature, an epitome of the Fascist conception of progress. Mussolini used the ten year operation (similarly to what Adolf Hitler was doing at the same time with the construction of the Autobahn) for propagandistic purposes. Mussolini was often photographed between workers shirtless with a shovel in hand.
Because Mussolini’s engineers used plans closely related to Donat’s, Mussolini named a street in the new city Pontina after him. At that time, the cities Littoria (now Latina), Sabaudia and Pontinis (now Pontina), Aprilia and Pomezia were created in 1932, 1934, 1935, 1937 and 1939 respectively.
At the northernmost end of the marshes, the beachhead at Anzio (ancient Antium) was the site chosen for the famous World War II amphibious landing of January 22, 1944. The treeless Pontine Marshes' irrigated fields interlaced with an intricate network of drainage ditches, offered scant cover for troops, and during the rainy season the fields were impassable to most heavy equipment. German sabotage of the pumping stations of the drainage system during World War II demonstrated how swiftly the area would become waterlogged without constant supervision. But the last of the malaria was conquered in the 1950s, with the aid of DDT.
Today a duct system runs through the dried-out area. Wheat, fruit and wine are cultivated in the Pontine region. The "Agro Pontino" is a flowering landscape with modern cities from the post-war period. By the year 2000, about 520,000 inhabitants live in the formerly deserted region.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- T. Berti, Paludi pontine (Rome, 1884)
- R. de Ia Blanchre, Un Chapitre d'hisioire pontine (Paris, 1889). (T. As.)
- Donat, Fedor, "Le Paludi Pontine", Roma 1886"Die Pontinische Suempfe", Berlin 1892 and Cassel 1898
- Der Grosse Brockhaus, Leipzig 1908, Bd.13, page 270
- Graf Hutten Hutten-Czapski, Bogdan, "60 Jahre Politik und Gesellschaft", Berlin 1936
