Ferrara - Voci di una Città

Florestano Vancini : a memoir Hit by a thunderbolt that determined a career and style of life. “In my day, it made a difference whether you were born and raised inside or outside the walls. Ferrara seemed to be a fortified place compared to that limitless countryside, poor and hard-working, and my father was only the Boara postman….” Florestano Vancini, who died on 18 September 2008 last, was physically born inside the walls, on 24 August 1926 in the hospital. However he was raised in Boara, the first village on the road to Copparo, and not “inside” the walled city.

Boldini in Paris The relationship between Boldini and French Impressionism will be explored in this great exhibition. Boldini painted a fascinating picture called Cantante mondana [“Society singer”] in the mid-1880s. It shows a snapshot of the Paris of the late nineteen-hundreds - the life, the cafés and the music halls that the artist patronised along with his friends and fellow-painters like Degas - and as such lay outside the area for which he was renowned, namely portrait painting.

It's all in the blood Impromptu thoughts of a "Dolomite-Po Valley man" My mother was tall and slim, with a consciously understated beauty; on the contrary, my athletic father was well aware of his good looks, tanned by the Cortina sun. She was from a good Ferrara family, had a diploma from the music conservatory and was anything but sporty; he was a ski and ice-hockey champion and mountain climber, from a modest family who were photography pioneers in this remote corner of Italy.

Story of a insolvent bank Luigi Franceschini and the "Piccolo Credito" bank, as remembered by his son. This is a nice “vintage” photograph taken at the San Girolamo Piazza eighty years ago. It is a souvenir photo with a certain historical interest: the three people on the right were very important characters in the story of the insolvency of a Ferrara bank, the “ Piccolo Credito ” : my father, the lawyer Luigi Franceschini, who was the receiver appointed by the Court of Ferrara ; to his right,

Mystery and blades of grass in Filippo De Pisis The re-emergence of the herbarium collected by the Ferrara painter as a young man. The artistic sensibility of many leading cultural figures was cultivated by collecting grasses, herbs and flowers stalks, to then smoothen them out and press them between sheets of blotting paper:Obviously the great naturalists were enthusiasts, but world-famous thinkers also shared this hobby (Rousseau,Goethe,von Chamisso and Hesse), as well as poets,

Heron city

Written by Vittorio Gozzi

An abandoned industrial building becomes a refuge for water birds.

The biggest “heron city” in Northern Italy was discovered almost by chance at the beginning of the eighties. The birds build their nests in these plants that grow around the former sugar-refinery tanks and along the Collettore Acque Alte road. This is an area of great naturalist and faunal value and lies at the back of the dilapidated factory which has tall, brick chimneys that are believed to function as the reference point for the return of these delicate birds. The Codigoro wild-life rescue centre is also in the same area and is organised by the provincial flora and fauna protection service and managed by “Pulci.No”. They are involved in the rescue of all the wild birds that require care in the lower Ferrara area and the Delta del Po park. Grey herons, tufted night herons, grey bitterns, little egrets and even some cattle egrets return to take over the numerous nests on the acacia and elderberry plants for their atavistic mating rituals from March to October. It is a unique area of over 93,000 m2 that the herons managed to carve out for themselves, very close to the roads and houses. Anyone who goes to the heron area of Codigoro will come into close contact with nature. A few years ago various researchers and the occasional fortunate visitor could close their eyes and listen to the strident birdsong of the night herons or other herons, and would have been able to imagine themselves in an unspoilt, natural area. If they opened their eyes, they would have been impressed by the graceful ascent of a little egret as it lifted off from the last branch of a false acacia, twanging gaily after freeing itself from the weight of the bird.If anyone approached the tanks of the former sugar refinery and stepped on a dry branch by chance, it would alarm the entire colony. Therefore a video-surveillance system was set up so people could admire nature without disturbing it. The cameras are positioned along the edges of the separation tanks of the former sugar refinery where the herons have built their nests on the elderberry and false acacia trees. They allow us to observe this extraordinary expression of nature by connecting to the site which is currently under construction www.comune.codigoro.fe.it. Nature is often unexplainable and unpredictable, the number of birds in the colony has gone up and down over the years, but anyone who loves nature must approach it very cautiously and just be grateful for the chance to witness this extraordinary and precious world. The value of this area meant that the Po Delta merited inclusion as a Unesco world heritage site.

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Published in Num. 30

An abandoned industrial building becomes a refuge for water birds. The biggest “heron city” in Northern Italy was discovered almost by chance at the b...

N. 30 - 06/2009

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Heron city