Comacchio

Comacchio stands amid the waterways and lagoons of the Po delta. Its early prosperity rested on its salt pans and its position among the channels leading to the Adriatic. The town was also a bishop's seat, with a cathedral serving a community whose life was closely bound to the surrounding lagoon waters.

Control of Comacchio passed between the rulers of Ferrara, Venice and the papacy. After a period under the Este, Venice took the town in 1508. At the end of the century Pope Clement VIII claimed it as a vacant fief, and in 1598 it passed again to the Papal States. The marshy surroundings brought difficulties as well as livelihood: malaria made the area unhealthy, even as the lagoons sustained fishing.