The Bacchiglione river
The Bacchiglione river starts in the Dueville "Woods" and is 119 kilometres long, making it one of the main waterways of the provinces of Vicenza and Padua.
According to some scholars, the name Bacchiglione could come from the dialectal verb "bacaliare", which means "to chatter incessantly”. The term "bacaliare" was probably used to describe the river because of the noise produced at its source. While other scholars argue that the term Bacchiglione may derive from the German word "Bach", meaning "brook" or "Baccalone", which became Bacchiglione.
Over the centuries the Bacchiglione river played a key role in the development and growth of the local populations and their settlements. The river was not only a means of communication and transportation of goods, but also a source of wealth due to the mills along its course. It also played an important role between 1100 and 1400 when the water of the river became a means of defence in the wars between Vicenza and Padua. In fact, the Vicenzans constructed a "rosta", that is to say a dam, at Longare to divert the course of the Bacchiglione river to Bisatto and deprive the city of Padua of water, as mentioned by Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy.
Over time, a civilization developed and stabilized along the Bacchiglione river that gave rise to the historical, architectural and artistic heritage that can still be seen today. Examples of this historic and artistic heritage are the numerous villas, the Port and the Colzé locks.
The Colzé navigation basin, located in a large natural meander of the Bacchiglione, is particularly interesting. The basin was constructed in 1870 to replace the pre-existing lock chamber and has two sets of Da Vincian mitre doors and a reservoir. Inside the reservoir, the water level could be raised or lowered, allowing boats to easily overcome the steep gradient of the river of about 3.5 m. Today, it is recognized as an interesting piece of engineering and an artefact of industrial archaeology.
