Ciao.

40 years ago, on November 4th 1966, at dawn, after 24 hours of heavy and violent rain, the river Arno broke its banks and Florence was submerged by a catastrophic flood.

A furious, huge amount of water and mud started to run through the entire central part of the town, sweeping away everything in its path.

It's been calculated that about 400 million cubic meters of water overflowed onto Florence that day.



Here is a map that shows how the water moved into Florence:



35 people lost their lives in town and surroundings.

Also the Artistic Heritage of Florence was seriously harmed.

The water came up till the first floor of the houses, at a height of 5 or 6 meters, and all museums, churches, places of art were inundated: hundreds of ancient artworks were damaged, thousands of precious, unique, handmade books were fatally compromised.

The Crucifix of Cimabue, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, horribly injured by water and mud that tore off large portions of colour, became the symbol of that tragedy.
The Crucifix before the flood and after the restoration:




Florence is a well-known City of Art, therefore the disaster shocked the entire World and spread an incredible spirit of solidarity, involving notable persons like Sen. Edward Kennedy - in this picture with the Mayor of Florence Bargellini - and Richard Burton, who commented on a documentary filmed by the director Zeffirelli.



Thousands of peolple, from the rest of Italy and all the World, come and help the Florentines to clean up, re-build and save as many artworks as possible.

Those wonderful people are known as Angels of the Mud.


This is a short video about the calamity: link.

In the attachment you'll find an overlay (3MB) which shows the flooded areas and several placemarks which point the main phases of the flood.



Sources:
- Wikipedia
- Comune di Firenze
- Provincia di Firenze (good historical material)
- La Repubblica
- RAI
- ANSA
- Autorita' di bacino del fiume Arno
- Angeli del Fango (English)
- Kunsthistorisches Institut (English, excellent web pages)

Trivia:
Walking around Florence you can find over 100 marble plaques which mark the water level of the flood in that point, like this one which is at 4.4 meters from the ground.

Bye
b


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Forum Post of the Week on 6 November 2006

What a great post with Art,history and links.Very well done.

I'd never heard of this before, but your pictures and placemarks really bring it alive. Absolutely fascinating! The then and now images from Autorita' di bacino del fiume Arno are especially effective. Thanks!

Do you mind me asking if you remember it? Were you there? I imagine it's very much in the news at the moment.

5 planets from me

An excellent presentation. I remember seeing high-water marks on buildings there when I visited Florence in the 1980's. The image of the Duomo being drowned is especially sobering.

Here's a link to a larger photo taken from the south side of river, which looks like a placid canal much of the time.



I'm glad that the casualties were not greater, but I assume that many average people lost a great deal in the flood, in addition to it being a tragedy to the world's art.

Hi Noisette

Quote:

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Do you mind me asking if you remember it? Where you there?

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I don't have a direct memory since I came to Florence two years later, plus I was just a little baby at that time

Thanks for rating

Bye
b

A great post that comes alive with information!

Thats worth some globes for sure.

This is so interesting. I learned so much from just reading thru it. Great post!

Excellent post 'bebop'! I've written about your collection at Google Earth Blog. Here's the blog entry.

Hopefully, a few more than the 180 who have downloaded your collection will see it now.

Wow, I recently visited Florence this summer on my way North from Rome and into France. I didn't hear about this catastrophe while there and I can't imagine seeing that beautiful city submerged and devastated by such a horrible flood. The story about the clean up was very touching though. Thanks for posting.

Hi bebop,

I may be very late with my congratulations, but your reportage on the Great Flood of 1966 is magnifico! A great document. How young you wizzkids all are! Noisette had never heard of it, and you were still a baby then!! And I, who remembers these days well (from a distance), only happened on your pages today. - I guess that is due to the great flood in GE. I can never find what I am looking for (and you know I have looked at Florence thoroughly). I searched your homepage for this post: 2000 proud "posts" on your GE site alone. I comb my homepage for junk every two months and delightedly delete posts which I no longer need (anything with less than 100 downloads!) - but I guess your standing at Google depends on their number.

How are you doing? Still jobbing hard? Any good new insights? - I am trying to keep Noisette busy.

You made may day tonight. Thank you!

As always best regards,
Rolf
(RWFG)