Commons in Italy

Every city and region we have visited so far in Italy has been vastly different from the next. Each new area has been new and refreshing, always bringing different surprises. However, there have been two areas that share a sense of rural ruggedness the others have lacked. These areas are the Venice lagoon and the mountain town of Cavalese.

Venice at night

We arrived in Venice to a frigid foggy climate that dramatized the already unique city. We took a walking tour with a guide who explained the origins and history of the city and also the problems the lagoon is currently facing such as flooding cities, pollution from large boats, water resource management, and reclamation of flooded land. The lagoon of Venice has largely been a commons, dating back to the first Roman settlers who tried to manage the water as early as the First Century A.D. A commons is a plot of land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to farm the timber on it. To organize land ownership and to unite public and private interests in land reclamation, the Reclamation Consortia was formed. This Consortia fulfilled the needs of a constantly evolving commons and still exists to this day preserving the region.

Pigeon master Dan

We visited a fishery working in a lagoon near Venice to see firsthand how an industry functions in this unique environment. We got to tour a part of the lagoon and see an aquarium that housed many of the aquatic species found in its waters. Listening to a presentation on how the fishery operates, I noticed that everything seemed to just flow, even under this highly competitive environment. This made me realize I was looking at around 2000 years of optimization of the Consortia in action. After the presentation we had a delicious sea food lunch that included a sample of most of the creatures we just watched swimming around in the aquarium. The Venice lagoon was a fresh rural change from the big cities we had been seeing before for me.

Lagoon at the fishery

The town we currently reside in called Cavalese shares a similar rural sense to the Venice lagoon. Cavalese is located about 60 miles from the Austrian border tucked in the side of the Italian Dolomites. There are snowy jagged mountain peaks in every direction lined with trees. It almost feels like the Bavarian village of Leavenworth in Washington with its Germanic looking wooden buildings and hills. Today we had a meeting with some of the representatives for Cavalese of the Magnifica Comunita Di Fiemme, an institution dating back since anyone can recall that exists to administer the collective property to preserve it, regulate the use of the territory, and to invest the revenues for the Fiemme Valley. Cavalese is one of the many towns that falls into this Valley commons designation. It was interesting to hear of the ways the Comunita self governed and sustained themselves for thousands of years and still do to this day using the land they all share. I look forward to getting out and exploring the town a little more to see how it compares to our previous stops. Tomorrow we are all going to try skiing so we will see how that goes! Looking around at the tree filled mountains it is easy to see the potential for an industry here. I really enjoy seeing the trees again since it reminds me a lot of home in the Pacific Northwest.

-Tyler Larson

Buildings in Trento, a town below Cavalese