Fiumi come corridoi di memorie culturali, saperi idraulici e rappresentazioni

The control and management of water flows are among the most significant human activities aimed at transforming the natural environment. In this paper the main goal is to face with the possibility to recognize in hydrography not only valuable assets that are at the core of landscape management, but also more intangible aspects that could actually matter deeply to people, such as “familiarity” or the complex emotional (and often unknown) relationships that affect what is understood as “watery sense of place”. It follows that the recovery of the waterfronts is now increasingly an attractive starting point for interaction between global processes and local perspectives. This fondness for waterscapes allows to develop the concept of hydrophilia that could be defined as an ancestral attraction where physiological mechanisms of sight, smell and hearing interact with moods, emotions and meanings. Matters concerning waterscapes representation are finally much more than specific fields of art history research, especially when considering renaissance Flanders and Italy watery iconographies. Such cultural heritage is a further opportunity for broadening the people’s awareness about the multifunctional role of fluvial sceneries.