Comacchio

Canals thread between low-slung brick buildings, and the bridges arch just high enough for a flat-bottomed boat to pass beneath. The air carries the tang of salt marsh and smoked fish. Comacchio in Emilia-Romagna sits where river becomes lagoon, where land becomes water, where the line between the two has always been negotiable.

Comacchio is a lagoon town in the Po Delta of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, built across thirteen small islands connected by bridges and canals. The town's identity has been inseparable from eel fishing for over two thousand years — the Manifattura dei Marinati, a restored factory beside the canals, still demonstrates the traditional method of trapping and smoking eels that sustained the town since Roman times. The surrounding Valli di Comacchio are a vast system of brackish wetlands, now a protected nature reserve and one of the most important birdwatching sites in southern Europe, home to flamingos, avocets, and herons. Trepponti, the town's five-arched bridge built in 1638, is the architectural centrepiece, connecting three separate canals at a single junction. Comacchio's isolation — too watery to be a city, too urban to be countryside — has preserved a character unlike anything else on the Italian mainland.