Overview
This unique reserve in the region and beyond straddles two municipalities, Mesola and Codigoro, or rather the Po di Volano and Po di Goro, and is included in the Ferrara part of the Po Delta Emilia Romagna regional park. It protects a series of fossilised dunes that testify to where the Adriatic Sea ended around 3,000 years ago, in the Bronze Age: this was where the coastline, now a few kilometres away, was located, and some dunes similar to those that now border the present shoreline were formed here. Today's scientists call them 'fossils' in the sense that they are no longer fed by the coastal sand and are, so to speak, 'fossilised' inland. The wind often erodes the fossilised dunes, provided that - as has happened in this part of the land - they are not covered by vegetation.
Today, the fossilised Massenzatica dunes, which can only be visited on marked trails, alternate between low grasslands and depressions occupied by shrubs and small woods: they are an oasis of biodiversity in the midst of cultivated fields and a landscape that has been modified by man for centuries through the reclamation of marshy areas. The reserve therefore serves as a refuge for various species of plants and animals, including some reptiles and many rare invertebrates. The insects are in turn preyed upon by birds such as hoopoe and bee-eater; the latter (pictured) is a colourful bird typical of the Mediterranean scrubs and warm European environments, which arrives every spring from Africa, nests in the sandy banks and then returns south as winter approaches.
