Sea, Earth and Sky merge and interpenetrate, salty and fresh waters merge. History has left solid traces, but myth and legend have fluid emotions. The spirit travels with the winds that come and go from the sea and from the mountains, lashing faces marked by the Sun. The mists on the reeds and along the canals, and the frost on the salt marshes bring sensations and emotions, with sunsets that set the sky on fire, making the waters shine. The stories around the hearth in the reed-built cabins, with memories illustrated by hands chapped by the salt and soil, serve to make the nights magical. The spirits hover, taking the form of fish and birds, molluscs and glasswort.

This is a lagoon crossed by all human migrations from Asia to Europe and vice versa, which was once a port to connect the Mediterranean to the Baltic, southern Europe to its centre and north, with amber, salt, iron, wood, pottery and metal artefacts finding their point of exchange, loaded and unloaded in the lagoon.The lagoon is also a crossroads for fauna and flora, a nodal point of migration, and a factory of biodiversity.

The lagoon is an ecosystem more closely connected with other ecosystems than it may appear at first glance.

The lagoon is a living and thinking organism that teaches those who open their hearts to it.

(Umberto Sarcinelli)
Photos by Stefano Stafuzza