The Tagliamento and Its Inhabitants: History, Research, and Local Knowledge for a Future of Coexistence with the River

09.05.2025 Chiara Saeta 6 min read

The history of the Friulian region is deeply intertwined with that of the Tagliamento River.
Learning from our history is essential for improving risk mitigation, as it provides crucial information about past flooding patterns and community responses, helping to better predict and manage future risks.

According to an ancient Māori legend, the Waitepuru River in New Zealand was seen as a deity in the shape of a lizard, with a warning to local populations not to build near its tail, where the flood risk was highest. Local knowledge is thus fundamental for flood risk mitigation, as communities have an intimate understanding of the dynamics of their land and river.

Following in the footsteps of researchers who have rediscovered the history of coexistence between communities and rivers, we analyzed historical documents and maps in which we can identify the relationships between Friulian communities and the Tagliamento River.

Based on this history, we have collected two narratives:

  • The story of the village of Rosa, and in particular its church, which was gradually relocated four times between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, until it reached its current position (Sclippa, 1997). The reason for this progressive relocation was the repeated flooding of the village due to the river’s gradual movement from west to east. The remains of the first church, destroyed in 1698, occasionally become visible in the riverbed and have given rise to the oral legend of “the church that crossed the river.”
  • The story of San Paolo di Morsano, which was cut off from the mainland on a river island for 100 years due to the braided channel dynamics of the middle course of the Tagliamento. In 1596, a flood created a secondary branch that separated it from the rest of the mainland. About 100 years later, another flood—triggered by the breaking of a river obstruction caused by a landslide in the upper course of the Tagliamento (the Borta landslide in 1692)—closed the secondary branch and reconnected the village to the mainland. The dry channel was reoccupied by the river during later floods, the last of which occurred in 1966. The story of San Paolo demonstrates that managing river-related risks requires a view of the entire Tagliamento basin.

Top: Map of the progressive relocation of Rosa (left) and image of the ruins of a former church that surfaced in the riverbed in 2010 (right); Bottom: Map of the current location of San Paolo (left) and in the historical map by Count Savorgnan Vettore from 1612 (right). Figure adapted from Scaini, C. and Scaini, A., Shima, 2025.

The analysis of these narratives teaches us many lessons and highlights the importance of understanding the dynamics of a free-flowing river, whose braided channels shift across the floodplain, causing floods in villages built near the river. These dynamics can only be understood and managed at the scale of the entire river basin.

Regarding the risks associated with the river, in 2021 we conducted a survey of people living near the Tagliamento River to understand how they perceive the river and the risks connected to it. Most responses identified land use planning as a crucial issue for flood risk management.

The respondents were not wrong: at the root of the problems linked to the Tagliamento lies an outdated paradigm of river and land management. Today we know that to properly manage the Tagliamento, we must consider long-term fluvial dynamics, land use, and exposure in riverside areas. Only then can we identify potential risk mitigation actions necessary to truly reduce the long-term risk of disasters.

The analysis of the river’s history reveals the adaptation strategies used in the past—for example, by respecting the river’s dynamics and either keeping a distance or relocating further from it. We analyzed historical and technical documents dating back to the late 1800s, a period during which modern embankments were built along the lower course. Numerous villages in the middle course—including Bugnins, Biauzzo, and Rosa—had moved away from the river over the centuries prior to the construction of the levees. What remains of the old villages are their place names (e.g., Biauzzo Vecchio, Bugnins Vecchio, Rosa Vecchia) and stories passed down through generations. This historical analysis teaches us that, in the past, some communities had identified potential ways to coexist with the river.

Left: The Tagliamento river course and the location of the study area. Right: Villages relocated in the middle course (Rosa, Biauzzo, Bugnins) and villages that remained in place (San Paolo). Figure adapted from Scaini, C. and Scaini, A., Shima, 2025.
Left: The Tagliamento river course and the location of the study area. Right: Villages relocated in the middle course (Rosa, Biauzzo, Bugnins) and villages that remained in place (San Paolo). Figure adapted from Scaini, C. and Scaini, A., Shima, 2025.

Engineer Croci, writing in the Journal of Civil Engineering in 1889, also described the common practice at the time of using old river channels—such as the Cavrato (now the location of the namesake relief canal) and the Masato (north of the locality of Gorgo)—as lateral channels to discharge floodwaters. Moreover, Croci proposed his own solution to the problem of flooding that had long affected the riverside populations of the lower course. Speaking about the recently built embankments in the lower course, he wrote:

“Before seeking a solution to the problem of what height should be assigned to the levees, it is appropriate to first make some observations regarding how the floods of this important watercourse occur and propagate […]. Serious shortcomings of the lower sections of the Tagliamento include the narrowness of the free cross-section, the sinuosity of the course, and the fact that the levees follow the river’s meanders. If the levees had been set farther from the banks and with a wider and straighter alignment, they would have allowed floodwaters a broader and more appropriate section for expansion, thus permitting freer flow, with the evident benefit of improving floodwater drainage and lowering water levels. It would have been better to extend the levees less toward the river mouth, limiting them to downstream of the bend at Cesarolo on the right bank and Pertegada on the left. Downstream from these locations, the cultivable lateral zones are quite narrow and are quickly followed by swampy and depressed lands, which—had the river been free to expand its sediment-laden waters—would have gradually been reclaimed due to the river’s successive deposits.”

Finally, in 1870, the hydraulic engineer Giuseppe Rinaldi emphasized the importance of preserving riparian forests, which were already gradually disappearing but played an important role in reducing and slowing floodwaters (Rinaldi, 1870).

 Historical floods of the Tagliamento in its lower course, the progressive construction of modern embankments, and the locations of the historical flood routes of the Masato, Mucose, and Cavrato (now the namesake relief canal). Figure adapted from Scaini, C. and Scaini, A., Shima, 2025.

This analysis—of which we present the key points here—is published in the article “Unravelling the Potential of Context-Based Storylines: Towards ecosystem-based land use planning for the Tagliamento River, northeastern Italy,” published in the academic journal Shima (10.21463/shima.236). The findings allow us to offer two main recommendations for the future of the river and its riverside communities by integrating local history with modern knowledge:

  1. The need to preserve the natural regulatory functions in the middle course of the river, where the braided channel morphology is still intact, along with many of the river’s ecosystem services.
  2. The need to reactivate these functions in the lower course, including especially the river corridors (already identified by Spaliviero in 2002) and the wetlands (visible on historical maps and drained in the second half of the 19th century).

In our view, these two directions should be developed further to understand if—and how—it is possible to mitigate river-related risks at the basin scale through ecosystem-based land use planning. Citizens, consulted through a 2021 questionnaire that received over 4,000 responses, also strongly expressed the desire for risk mitigation strategies that can preserve the river ecosystem and its cultural values.

This analysis can be further deepened and is the focus of our current research. A particular chapter concerns the study of the river’s mountain basin, where the 2021 questionnaire revealed a low awareness of risks, the presence of infrastructure that reduces water flow, and critical issues related to drought and flood events.

History teaches us many things—it is now up to us to build a future around this knowledge, one that we hope will foster coexistence with the river and ensure greater resilience for communities in the future. Four years after our first questionnaire and the beginning of our research, we are now conducting a new survey to understand how people currently perceive the Tagliamento River.

Would you like to participate? Fill out the questionnaire at https://tagliamento.org/take-action/

For those interested, here are the scientific sources, which can also be found in the e-library at www.tagliamento.org, soon available in Italian as well:

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