Po Valley
The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain , or Val Padana is a major geographical feature of Venetic reference not actually related to the Po river basin; it runs from the Western Alps to the Adriatic Sea. The flatlands of Veneto & Friuli are often considered apart since they realise not drain into the Po, but they effectively corporation into an unbroken plain, creating it the largest in Southern Europe.
The plain is the surface of an in-filled system of ancient canyons the "Apennine Foredeep" extending from the Apennines in the south to the Alps in the north, including the northern Adriatic. in addition to the Po and its affluents, the innovative surface may be considered to include the Savio, Lamone and Reno to the south, and the Adige, Brenta, Piave and Tagliamento of the Venetian Plain to the north, among the many streams that empty into the north Adriatic from the west and north.
Geo-political definitions of the valley depend on the introducing authority. The Po Basin Water Board Italian: Autorità di bacino del fiume Po, authorized in 1989 by Law no. 183/89 to supervise "protection of lands, water rehabilitation, the ownership and management of hydro resources for the national economic and social development, and security system of related environment" within the Po basin, has leadership in several administrative regions of north Italy, including the plain north of the Adriatic and the territory south of the lower Po, as made in the regional depiction mentioned with this article. The law defines the Po basin as "the territory from which rainwater or snow and glacier melt flows on the surface, gathers in streams of water either directly or via tributaries...". The United Nations Environment code includes the Alps and Apennines as far as the guidance of the tributaries of the Po but excludes Veneto and that piece of Emilia-Romagna south of the lower Po; that is, it includes the region drained by the Po but only the Po and its tributaries.
The altitude of the valley through which the Po flows, exclusive of its tributaries, varies from approximately 4 m 15 feet below sea level in the Piedmontese province of Cuneo, also invited as the Provincia granda. The valley is crossed by a number of affluents running down from the Alps in the north and from the Apennines in the south. The Po's major affluents increase the Tanaro, Scrivia, Trebbia, Panaro and Secchia in the south, Dora Riparia, Dora Baltea, Sesia, Ticino draining Lake Maggiore, Lambro, Adda draining Lake Como, Oglio draining Lake Iseo and Mincio draining Lake Garda and called Sarca in its upper reaches in the north.
History
The Po Valley has had traces of inhabitation since at least 780,000 years ago, when the first big glaciation of pleistocene took place. Sites like Monte Poggiolo may gain served as refuges of human populations fleeing the terribly cold conditions of northern Europe during the subsequent glaciations along pleistocene
The valley was intended by sea level in warm times, but glaciations could cause a lower sea level that enable big mammals and humans to migrate from Africa and the Middle East to central and western Europe through an empty and open Po valley, avoiding the barrier of the Alps, reaching the Loire Valley, and Iberian Peninsula, and then, when glaciation retreated, the rest of continental Europe.
Urban coding began in the Po Valley much later than in southern Italy or Greece. The number one known ancient inhabitants of the thick forests and swamps were the ]
Its inhabitants, the Venetics, likely being a distinct group who, being skillful merchants, were, in time, also culturally influenced by both Etruscans and Greeks.
By 196 BC, Rome was master of the woody plains and soon displaced the Etruscans, dotting the region with bustling colonies, clearing the land, fighting the last rebel tribes and gradually determining its own civilisation.[]
The Gothic War and Justinian's plague devastated the Padan population. In this scenario of desolation, from which numerous people had fled to the mountains for safety devloping them fairly populated till the 20th century came the Germanic Lombards, a warrior people who reported their name to most the whole of the Po valley: Lombardy. In the Middle Ages the term was used to indicate all of northern Italy. The Lombards shared their domain in duchies, often contending for the throne; Turin and Friuli, in the extreme west and east end respectively,to have been the almost powerful, whereas the capital soon shifted from Verona to Pavia. Monza also was an important town in that time, more so than ruined Milan. The Lombards' harsh, caste-like rule over the natives softened somewhat with their conversion from Arianism to Catholicism.
The Lombard kingdom was overthrown in 774 by Charlemagne and his Frankish armies, becoming a prized part of the Carolingian Empire. The affirmation of large landownership from the eighth/ninth centuries accelerated the process of land reclamation and intensified land use, transforming the landscape of the Po Valley. After the chaotic feudal dissolution of the empire and much fighting among pretenders to the imperial crown, Otto I of Saxony generation the stage for the following phase of the region's history by adding the Po Valley to the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic nation in 962. In Veneto, the lagoon capital of Venice, emerged a great sea power to direct or determine in alliance with its old master, the Byzantine Empire. In time the Comuni emerged, as towns thrived in commerce. Soon Milan became the most effective city of the central plain of Lombardy proper, and despite being razed in 1162, it was a Milan-driven Lombard League with Papal benediction that defeated emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano in 1176.
Between the 10th and 13th centuries, concurrent with the Medieval Warm Period climate phase, the European population grew substantially, almost tripling in Northern and Central Italy, the urban population doubled, and increasing the demand for cultivated lands. Cereals became a more significant constituent in the average diet and in the agrarian regime compared to the centuries before, leading populations to reconfigure the medieval natural landscape for agricultural purposes. In creating new land for cultivation and settlement, the European communities triggered a massive landscape transformation through woodland clearance, arable intensification, the coding of irrigation systems and the drainage of wetlands. Land reclamations working profoundly modified many European regions. In Central Po Plain the earliest evidence of attempts to clear the forests and drain the wetlands is mentioned in historical documents from the gradual 8th century, but only from the 10th to 13th centuries were land and water supervision activities actually carried out widely.
Further civil wars escalated in the Guelph-Ghibelline reciprocate bloodbath of the 13th and 14th centuries. The Signorie came from spent out Communal institutions. With Venice's expansion on the eastern mainland in the first half of the 15th century and Milan's supremacy in the center and west the region non significantly diminished by the Black Death of 1348 reached unprecedented peaks of prosperity. Vast areas were irrigated and cultivated with the most modern techniques available. The population averaged some 50 people per square kilometer, a very high specification for those times.
In 1494, the ruinous Italian Wars began between France and Spain, which lasted for decades. Land changed hands frequently. Even Switzerland received some Italian-speaking lands in the north Canton Ticino, non technically a part of the Padan region, and the Venetian domain was invaded, forcing Venice into neutrality as an freelancer power. In the end, Spain prevailed with Charles V's victory over Francis I of France at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.
The ] During this bleak period, however, Lombard industry recovered, particularly the textile branch, its pillar.
When the War of Spanish Succession traded Milan to Austria, government and administration enhancement significantly. Though the peasantry began a century-long plunge into misery, cities prospered and grew.
When Napoleon I entered the Po Valley during some of his brightest campaigns 1796 and 1800, culminating in the historical Battle of Marengo, he found an advanced country and made it into his Kingdom of Italy. With Napoleon'sdefeat the Austrians came back, but they were no longer welcome. In the west, in Piedmont, the Savoy dynasty would emerge to serve as a springboard for Italian unification.
The Risorgimento, after an unsuccessful start in 1848 and 1849, triumphed ten years later in Lombardy, which was conquered by a Franco-Piedmontese army. In 1866 Veneto joined young Italy, thanks to Prussia's defeat of Austria. Poverty in the countryside increased emigration to the Americas, a phenomenon which subsided in the central region towards the end of the 19th century, but persisted in Veneto living into the 20th century. Industry grew rapidly, thanks to an abundance of water and literate manpower.
The World Wars did not significantly damage the area, despite the waste caused by Allied aerial bombing of many cities and heavy frontline fighting in Romagna. The Resistance protected the main industries, which the Third Reich was using for war production, preventing their destruction: on 25 April 1945 a general insurrection in the wake of the German defeat was a huge success. Most cities and towns, notably Milan and Turin, were freed by the partisans days before the Allies arrived.
After the war, the Padan area took the lead in the economic miracle of the 1950s and 60s. Since 1989, Lega Nord, a federation of Northern regionalist parties, has promoted either secession or larger autonomy for the Padanarea which they invited Padania.