Up until the 1960s, many goods-carrying boats called burchi would have been seen transiting along the Bacchiglione River, headed to Venice, Padua and Battaglia Terme. Almost all the towns along the river had a harbor, taverns, stores and grocery shops. Here, a multitude of people who lived their lives in daily contact with the river, circulated: boatmen, horsemen (who pulled the boats using horses), innkeepers, traders, porters, smiths, fishermen, carpenters, and so on. Today, as our relationship with the environment has changed, so too has our perception of the rivers and their waters. They are no longer seen as communication routes par excellence, or the axis around which daily life and work revolves. Rather they are perceived almost exclusively as elements of risk, capable of bringing about calamities and disasters, such as the last flooding of the Bacchiglione in 2010.