Fùcino Plain

The Fucino Plain is a large basin of cultivated fields surrounded by parks and nature reserves of great natural interest: the Sirente Velino Nature Park, the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park and the Simbruini Mountains Regional Nature Park. But it hasn’t always been that way. Until about a century and a half ago, this hollow was a lake, the third largest in Italy. However, the presence of a number of streams and springs that fed it and the lack of outfalls caused the water level to vary constantly, causing damage to the fields and towns around it. As early as the 1st century AD, Emperor Claudius decided to drain it, employing the labour force of over twenty thousand slaves. With the fall of the Roman Empire and the advent of the Barbarians, the constant maintenance of the canals and the excavated tunnels ceased, so the waters took back their basin. Much later, Duke Alessandro di Torlonia expanded the project and had a new drainage canal built between 1854 and 1875. The lake disappeared, a huge swamp was created and the area had to be reclaimed. The basin then became fertile countryside. Today, the Fucino plain is a tidy grid of cultivated fields from which excellent products are produced, such as the Fucino PGI carrot and potato.