Rotary Club Morimondo Abbey

(Article by Silvia Lodi Pasini)  – MORIMONDO – The culture of technique and the technique of culture. By syllogism we are talking about Mario Comincini, who on Wednesday evening enchanted the members of RC Morimondo Abbazia by talking about the Navigli basins. Together with him at the president's table, Beppe Resnati, also the mayor of Ozzero Guglielmo Villani and the captain of the Army Mauro Arnò. Comincini entertained everyone as the historian and expert connoisseur of the area that he is, on the basis of the book he wrote and published in 2012: "La prima conca dei canigli milanese (1438)". And in doing so he revealed the interesting history of the Navigli and the "Leonardo basin": a hydraulic work designed to overcome the difference in height between two waterways imposed by the conformation of the land, and as such fundamental for navigation in the artificial canals dug by man, such as the canals. However, the basin only has the name of Leonardo: he was not the one who invented it, even if he was the first to draw it and describe its functioning. It is not known who invented it, while it is certain that the first document that talks about it dates back to 1438 and describes none other than the basin of the Naviglio di Bereguardo which is located in Morimondo. It is this, therefore, that wins the title of "oldest lock in the world", beating by just one year the Viarenna lock in Milan, mentioned in a document from 1439. In short, it is in Morimondo that the progenitor of all the locks, which in the centuries to come spread throughout the world: North Europe, Rhone, Rhine, up to the Panama Canal. "Contrary to what has been handed down since the 18th century regarding the first basin of the Navigli, identifying it in the one planted in 1439 by the Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan near the Darsena - explained Comincini -, the documents demonstrate that the primacy of the first basin belongs to the Naviglio dug by Abbiategrasso in Bereguardo at the behest of Filippo Maria Visconti. My research, in fact, has brought to light a more ancient: the installation of locks in the Naviglio di Bereguardo at the beginning of 1438 and, after a few months, in the Naviglio di Cusago and in a disappeared canal between the castle of Milan and Porta Ticinese. Then, in 1439, in the Naviglio di Viarenna and in a canal disappeared from Bereguardo to Pavia and, in the following years, in the Naviglio from Binasco to Pavia, in the Naviglio di Vigevano and in the Naviglio della Martesana". And after a few decades Leonardo da Vinci would have admired this expression of Lombard genius, also studying some improvements and thus creating the myth of the "Leonardo's basins". The fact is that based on Comincini's research, the honorific title of "putative father of all navigli" belongs precisely to the Naviglio di Bereguardo: the first canal of the terraqueous world described by history for its locks. In short, if the best-known navigation lock system in the world is that of the Panama Canal, the oldest is that of the Naviglio di Bereguardo. Surprisingly.

Silvia Lodi Pasini