Il contributo dell’immagine fotografica alla narrazione dei paesaggi d’acqua

The Sistema dei Navigli Milanesi consists of a network of canals whose construction began in the late 12th century and ended in the early 20th century. The infrastructure responds to a plurality of needs, combining its role as the backbone of the river navigation system with that of the backbone of the irrigation network, and as a source of water power. The Naviglio Pavese represents the last piece of the project, and its construction makes the infrastructure a true historical-cultural-architectural organism, characterising the agricultural areas, and determining economic and social development of the urban ones. However, the gradual decline of commercial navigation in the second half of the 20th century and the reduction of its industrial/energy function meant that the Sistema dei Navigli Milanesi lost its multi-functionality, being reduced to a more conventional network of irrigation canals. Along the Naviglio Pavese, rural settlements, bridges that are no longer usable, factories and large 19th-century industrial centres remain the only interpreters of the close relationship of the waterway with the city and the surrounding area. The rapid transformation of the infrastructure has affected Pavia economically and culturally, impacting on the way public spaces are used, almost to the point of concealing the more recent past. In this sense, the recovery of historical memory becomes a necessity with a view to a Cultural Heritage assessment that considers and protects the physical infrastructure, the individual components that remain and the socio-economic aspects linked to them. Hence, photography, a privileged tool for preserving the identity, collective and cultural memory of a place, is configured as the main source from which to understand how the Naviglio and the towpaths qualified the urban environment until the first half of the 20th century. Photos of the ordinary activities of Pavia’s ‘water civilisation’ are supplemented by those depicting the most significant occasions in its hydraulic history. The contribution intends to present one aspect of a broader research on the transformations that have defined the current landscape of the Naviglio Pavese in the centre of Pavia, proposing an analysis aimed at reconstructing the urban dynamics around the canal from the end of the 19th century to the 1930s. The study, initiated based on archival research evaluating numerous public and private collections, proposes, through a selection of images, a theoretical analysis to deepen historical knowledge, which may direct future anagement choices on the heritage constituted by the Naviglio Pavese in a conscious and lasting way.