Hugh Thomson

Tales of the riverbank: the power of the Po

A beguiling journey along the river that has always exerted a fertile grip on the Italian imagination

Sophia Loren in the 1954 film La Donna del Fiume, set on the Po. [Alamy] 
issue 16 July 2022

It may not be the grandest of the world’s waterways – the Nile and Amazon are ten times its length – but the Po has always exerted a fertile grip on the Italian imagination. Virgil called it ‘the king of rivers’; Dante died in its marsh estuary, having earlier described in Purgatorio how Jacopo del Cassero was chased there and fell fatally, ‘entangled in the mud and reeds of the Paduan swamp’, leaving a pool of blood on its waters.

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