Discovery of the ancient church of Adria, buried by alluvial deposits

Adria is a small city located in the northern Po delta at the edge of the Venice Lagoon, a sector of the Po Plain that was built by the late Holocene geomorphic activity of the Po, Adige and Tartaro rivers. What was until now generally considered to be a crypt founded in 1830 under the church of San Giovanni, has today been rediscovered as a possible early medieval church, buried over centuries under three meters of alluvial deposits. Rewriting the history of the crypt and of the entire town, formerly a rich greek-Etruscan city that gave its name to the Adriatic Sea, was Elisa Corrò - a young geoarcheologist who recently graduated with a PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

After three years of research in the archives and analysis in the field using coring, the scholar has shown not only that the church was buried, but also highlighted how in ancient times the early medieval topographic arrangement was extended in the north of the city to the Tartaro-Canal Bianco area, a stream which now occupies the old bed of the River Po. An early medieval settlement whose tracks have been partially covered by floods, these days the church remains the only evidence.

"The church existed in ninth century AD and is beautifully decorated with frescoes - explains Elisa Corrò. We are in the presence of a church directly involved in the transformations caused by rivers. It is an example, occurring in the past but still tangible and scientifically valid today, of how changes in the environment can lead to extreme consequences, whether these are of natural or manmade cause. The church was buried by the deposits of two floods, the first of which took place between the ninth and eleventh century, while the second came later, after the fifteenth century. The analysis of sediments and data made available to the Archaeological Superintendence of Veneto (with official archaeologist Maria Cristina Vallicelli) and the National Archaeological Museum of Adria (director Giovanna Gambacurta) allowed us to reconstruct the evolution of the city over the centuries. In fact, up until now, much was only known on the south of Canal Bianco, the part which has always been thought of as the main body of the city".

The discovery was published in the international Journal of Archaeological Science - Reports, in an article signed by Elisa Corrò, from the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari, and Paolo Mozzi, a researcher in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Padua as well as supervisor of this degree research together with Sauro Gelichi, Professor of Medieval Archaeology at Ca’ Foscari. It will be presented publicly for the first time at Teatro Ferrini in Adria on Thursday, October 27th at 4.45pm, at a conference entitled "The origins of the early medieval cathedral of Adria". The event celebrates the 240 year anniversary of the laying of the first stone of the city's current cathedral.

Photo by Marco Moro