Overview
A few kilometres south of Comacchio, the Stazione Foce area is the ideal starting point to discover the lagoon ecosystem protected by the Emilia-Romagna Po Delta Regional Park. Here, in a fascinating landscape, there is an observation tower, a restaurant created in an old fishermen's house and an "open air" museum inaugurated in 2022, where you can see the reconstruction of a portion of the ancient town of Spina (an important Etruscan port city overlooking the Adriatic Sea), built through careful experimental archaeological work.
Stazione Foce is also the starting point for the silent motorboats that let visitors to explore the Valli di Comacchio, originally large bodies of fresh water, formed by flooding rivers, and from the sixteenth century, brackish water, due to the intrusion of marine waters. It is perhaps the best place in the delta for a close view of pink flamingos, birds that have become a symbol of the park and nest in a large colony in the southern part of the Valli. The boat trip normally reaches two fishing houses ('Casone Pegoraro' and 'Casone Serilla'), which have been restored and set up to show visitors the work, tools and living conditions of fishermen in the twentieth century. A traditional 'lavoriero', or fixed trap for catching eels separately from other fish as they migrate towards the sea, has been restored in the body of water between the two cottages.
