Fotocineclub - Lignano Sabbiadoro

The text: written by Doriano Moro,
it originates from the stories of the common people,
from the 30 year-old researches developed
in collaboration with the Town Library,
from the manuscript "PAOLINI".

Lignano
An emotion that lasts one century

"Fragments of History" has been realized and entirely financed by the Foto Cine Club Lignano without any contribution of other organisations and it's now on downloable for free, with the prayer to respect the developed job, quoting the paternity of it. And it's also forbidden even a partial use in other web sites of this text. All the rights are reserved Foto Cine Club - Lignano.

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1903-2003
One hundred years of vacation

The “culture of the memory” began late in Lignano Sabbiadoro: in fact only from the 1980 Town Library and the FotocineClub they began, with great enthusiasm to pick up images and news of the so many small aspects that characterize our city: the first pioneers, the fishing, the agriculture, the years of the economic boom, the notable tourist and building development and… very other.
Thanks to this job and the understanding among the people that gravitate around these two realities, the lignaneese community now has a written memory and rich of images.
If the worth to have picked up a good part of the great quantity of available images, must be recognizet to the FotoCineClub, the worth to have organized and published the news that concern Lignano, goes to the Town Library,such news that in extreme synthesis are brought in this publication.
Every time that we where deluded “to have really everything and thet we haven't anything to be found, punctually un “unpublished” image comes out -often for the hand of some old tourist-that gets us on work again.
And it's in that way the search is still long live and active, despite the over 20 years and the many sleepless nights spent to prepare photographic shows or projections in fading. We wish that the collaboration with the Town Library continuous still for many years: in fact there are still a lot of images that have need to be reported, so that the history of Lignano can be once more relived or imagined.
Our children and our nephews have the right to know the history of the city in which they live:
the historical memory doesn't have to be “thrown away”!!!
It is for this reason that we will always keep on working and document, also the present, that will be tomorrow's history.

*1

A “silence without history” it seems to wind the peninsula of Lignano up to the Nine hundred dawn and to the advent of the tourism. The memory of antecedent Lignano brings back to April 11 th 1903- date of foundation of the first Bathing Establishment- it has as only traces the ancient maps, that recorded the peninsula of Lignano only as physical presence, territorial, an empty geographical space between the political borders of the Republic of Venice and the ancient fortress e of Marano, this last strategic-defensive limit of the territorial hegemony of the Serenissima.

*2

The first graphic representations describe Lignano as a serie of dunes (8 or 9) modeled by the winds, a messy tangle of channels; the beautiful sandy beach result of the incessant one and millenary constant work of the sea, and the Tagliamento river tides. A thick brushwood of black pines, oaks, butcher's-brooms…

*3

A few houses on a rise of the lagoon slope, some shelter for fishermens called "casone" near Marano and, from the halves of XVI° century a small Church. A kind of “no mans land” setteld by fishermens, rafters, country poor mens “with malaria on the face”, hunters of stain and swamp, perhaps also horses breeders.

*4

Nevertheless there is written text about Lignano about the existence of a first nucleus of life since the Roman time. A document from the VI° century quotes quintum litus quod appellatur Lugnanum propter hoc quod luporum multitudo (a beach that calls Lignano…), a place perhaps ownership of a certain Lunius..

*5

Small port on the sea, tied up to the lagoon and to the hinterland of the lowland through the connections guaranteed by the many river courses that flow into the lagoon. The primitive savageness of the territory also preserves trace in the popular tradition that makes derive Lignano from Pineda, "pine woods". That trunks of tree that went down along the Tagliamento river, driven by the rafters to the river mouth, they were loaded on Venetian ships and transported to the Arsenal of Venice, insatiable devourer of necessary lumber for the fleet and to make firm the water soaked islands: the shine of the Serenissima leans also on an invisible forest torn from the earth of the Friuli.

*6

During the the Venetian Republic (from 1419) Lignano was given like feud to different noble families, among which the family Vendramin distinguished, feudal of Latisana and descendant from Doges, which built, in the second halves the XVI° century, the Church of St. Zaccaria, today situated in the small suburb of Pineda.

*7

After a long series of skirmishes for the possession of Marano disputed between Venice and the Empire (to the beginning of the XVIII° century was built in the extremity of the peninsula, a bunker to watch over the access to the lagoon of Marano), Lignano didn't returned to the Vendramins anymore, but it remained “Earth of the Doge”, integral part of the military state propriety in Venice, directly administered by the "Cuncile of Ten" and assigned as income to the Hospital of the Incurable ones, a Venetian beneficent foundation. A second small fortress was built in Napoleonic time during the continental block, near the barracks of the Guardia di Finanza.

The historical sources document in 1813 the presence on the peninsula of Lignano of only 70 people, within the soldiers and a sanitary inspector.

The Lignano at the beginnings

*8

At the beginnings of the century, Lignano was still an isthmus covered with pine woods, among sand dune toward the sea; from swamps, salty lawns and vegetation of the lagoon. The peninsula was partly uninhabited, the houses of the farmers rose on the extreme opposit of the peninsula, next to the river Tagliamento or in proximity of the lagoon, center of fishermens activity.

*9

The bathing history of this city began in the spring of 1903,
from Marano the 11th April set sail the small group of six boats, with on board four journalists of Udine, administrators and politicians of the Low Friuli with their families, to set the foundations of the first bathing establishment, a modest wooden construction, risen in the place of the most ambitious project of a terrace on the sea designed by the Venetian engineer Vendrasco. The choosen place was the oriental point of the peninsula, the most far from the dry land but the closest to the port of Marano.

*10

Three ladies of the party planted on the beach-with propitiatory rite- sprigs of juniper picked among the dunes, while was traced on the sand the base of the first establishment “Baths of Porto Lignano”. The words of the official orator pointed out like patron of the new establishment the goddess Venus that, been born from the sea, it contained in itself beauty and health. These pioneers perhaps had in the eyes the suggestions of Grado and the Lido of Venice, already affirmed bathing stations and destination of an elegant clientele already from years.

*10.1

The sea acces would have conditioned the following settlement choices of Lignano. The city developed from the extreme point to expand herself during the decades in west direction, till she reached the Tagliamento river. The first road was built to connect the harbour, situated around the mouth of the actual dock, to the open sea. From here a second parallel road departed to the sea. On these two ways they built among 1903 and 1910, the first hotels and the first villas.

BEFORE WORLD WAR

*11

The bathing season of the year 1914, was introduced under the best auspices: she had been preceded by a huge advertising campaign edited by the press from Udine, and important works of reclamation had already been decreed, as the reclamation of the"biancure” and the reorganisation of the Marano harbour, declared as first class. With the beginning of the conflict however the hotels depopulated entirely, the villas were closed and only three Hotel keeper and their respective families remained in Lignano. During the seasons '15, '16 and '17, the number of the swimmers was meaningless, small, but the business didn't miss however thanks to the detachment of the Italian troops, and to the transit of the provisionings that reached the front through the Venetian coast road, that was completed for war demands after years of promises and delays, inaugurated to her times December 4 th 1915 8,30 in Portogruaro with an excursion in vaporetto toward Marano. After the defeat of Caporetto in November 1917 the Austrians arrived; the Bathing Establishment was damaged and completely destroyed to make firewood of it, loading the everything on the ships toward Trieste.

*12

The Great War decreed the failure of the first fatiguing attempt of tourist take-off of beginning century. At the end of the conflict, he started almost again; protagonist of this second phase would have been the architect Provino Valle author, at the end of the Twentyth, of a serie of urbanistic plans. One of them pointed out not only a tourist forecast of the zone, but also related to traditional activity as fishing and the agriculture. It was his lso the realization of the “terrace to sea”, that will remain up to the sixties the symbol of the city.

The turn of the Thirties and the first great works

*13

The access to Lignano from the lagoon had determined the settlement on the oriental point of the peninsula. That access far from the dry land, however suggestive, has slowed down the growth. The connections to earth were made in fact particularly difficult by the conditions of the marshy grounds. The Valle Pantani, at the end of the XIX century it was still a small inside brackish lake, among Lignano, the Tagliamento and Latisana.
Only after the realization of Bevazzana revolving bridge in 1922, and of the road between Lignano and Latisana in 1926, the communications with the hinterland became more agile and comforting, finally competitive with those by sea.

*13.1

Close to the improvement of the road connections, even though indirect contribution to the tourist development, derived from the work of reclamation. The mosquitos of the malaria infested the marshy zones, and the danger of the illness was of obstacle to the vacation. In the years '20 and '30 were opened the channels collectors, that crossed the whole peninsula, from the Tagliamento to the actual Dock, to pick up the stagnant waters; besides some great reclamations were undertaken in the grounds of the valleys Pantani and Lovato, on the inside slope of the peninsula.

*14

The Thirties marked a more definite affirmation of the city as place for vacations. The buildings of the church started, the dock, but above all the sea colony was realized, other symbol of the bathing image. The reclamations, the dock, the colony, the flooring of the waterfront they saw the presence of the State.
In the 1935 Lignano became “Stazione di Soggiorno” and a public organism, the tourist board, replaced the private companies in the activity of tourist promotion. In the same year it was made a new urbanistic plan by Domenico Piegatolo, that favored the tendency of growth in action, tracing a road waterfront of two kilometers.

The housing housebuilding pursued the forms of the modernity. The city for vacations offered the most favorable conditions to the architects to experiment the new architecture. At the end of the '30 Lignano recorded 60.000 presences, of which the 60% were Italians, reversing the tendency that until then had seen dominate the foreign tourists.

SECOND WORLD WAR

*15

Lignano has not suffered big uneasiness during the second world conflict even if she has often been theater of intense airplanes duels. The occupation of the German army begins after September 8 th 1943 with troops of predominantly Austrian nationality, that entertained an enough good relationship with the local population. Such troops were displaced part near the Colony and part in the barracks of the Guardia di Finanza placed near the mouth of Tagliamento river, while the Command was installed in the villa Moretti placed in Fountain Plaza; near the command there was also an infirmary with three medical officers, hocked more to take care of the local population that their own soldiers. In the 1944 winter they began the construction of the bunkers; they worked -above all at night- and they were young local people at the dependences of the “TODT”, (a German paramilitary organization).
About around 4 miles offshore Lignano, there was an obstruction formed by a cord of around seven kilometers of mines, set to defense of the entry of Porto Buso and of the mouth of the Tagliamento. In the autumn of 1944 other soldiers of the German army arrived in retreat, about hundred at all, belonging to the 278 ^ division German infantry commanded by the General Harry Hoppe and some grenadiers of the 993 field regiment: the first ones were attested to Bevazzana near the Idrovora “Burgato” place called Pantanello; the other ones had put to watch of the dams on the Tagliamento. In January '45 the whole inclusive zone among street Lovato and street Tarvisio up to the Coast was flooded for opposing possible allied unloadings, with about a meter of water.
April 1945 the escape from Lignano: it tells us Heinz Hochschulz, a Germanic ex-soldier interviewed by the Fotocineclub «late at night we have been climbed on the trucks and traveling for a long time without knowing where we went, we where found again imprisoned by the British in Trento». Among 27 and on April 28 the great disembarktion: around 14.000 Austrian soldiers, on about ten ships and loaded barges of animals of every kind, they hoped to go up the Tagliamento to return home; the ships in approach to the coast where sighted by American aviation less than two hours from the bases in Ancona, already freed by the allies, they arrived with around fifty airplanes, that almost darkened the sun in that splendid spring day, but that they only passed a few times above the German ships; such demonstration of strength was enough however for “to convince” the Austrians to surrender themselves to the partisan and the allied troops (From New Zeland) estabilished along the coast.

Fundamental episode of the urbanistic history of Lignano of the second postwar period is the plan for Pineta drawn by the known architect from Udine Marcello D'Olivo.

*16

In the first '50 Lignano, city of vacation, the house is not a necessary good, but the symbol of comfort and in many cases social status of the middle class that had shortly conquered the comfort. Who, better of others, interpreted the requests of the new middle class it was the architect Avon. Then the years of the economic boom and the massive tourism will follow. From 25.000 beds offered and 1.800.000. presences in the beginnings of 1960, in 1973 the availible beds where 75.000, with a never exceeded 6 million tourist presences. Form 1.700 building licenses of the decade 1951-60 they passed to the almost 2.500 of the following decade.

*17

In the Seventies there was a contest for the new "Terazzamare": among the many participants the winning project of the ingegner Bernardis, identifies the modern as a value.

*18

Lignano center of bathing tourism, that is a jewel for the economy of the Low Friuli for some months on the year recalls on her beaches hundreds of thousand of people becoming so the most populous city of the Friuli. This moving in mass toward the sea of Lignano a place of escape from the daily work.
This city, only one hundred years old, through her own tourist vocation,has all the peculiarities to be place of experimentation for the new. It is to all of us to gather its opportunities and to conduct her toward a future, never as today, full of unknown.

the FotoCineClub with all his members

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