I Remember Water

The ‘batana’ wooden boat sailing the inland historical waterways of Venice
This traditional wooden boat, called ‘batana’, is now gone but until the first half of the 19th century was one of the different barges used for transport on the inland waterways of Venice. The Battaglia Canal is the historical waterway built between 1189 and 1201 to connect the flourishing city of Padua with the Venice Lagoon passing through hills rich in precious volcanic stones. This waterway was crucial for local trade. From the 1920s, the level of the canal was regulated by a lock. An experienced boatman used to say, “it was a moment of joy and gratitude when the doors of the lock opened with a great noise … It was the beginning of a journey across beautiful riverine villages where to meet smart people... so, it always conveyed a special feeling of freedom”. In the 1970s, river navigation for trade was definitively discontinued.
River Navigation Museum, Battaglia Terme, Padua, ITALY
The ‘Bhistees’ and their ‘mashqs’, India
The word ‘Bhistee’ originates from the Arabic word ‘Bahisht’ or ‘Paradise’. Hailing from Rajasthan, they played an important role during the British Raj. Every British army contingent had a group of Bhistees who were in charge of providing drinking water to all soldiers from their goat-skin bags called mashqs. Over a period of time the British left the country and piped water was introduced. However, the Bhistees continued to live and work in the old bylanes of Mumbai for many decades supplying water for family events or small businesses.
Mohmad Aslam Saiyad, Living Waters Museum, INDIA
Group of ice cutters on the Danube basin, early 1900s, Hungary
Ice as a basic means of preservation has been a very important material in households. In winter, ice-cutting brigades marched to the rivers and lakes to cut ice. It was broken with an axe, and then the 10-20 cm thick block was pulled ashore with a pickaxe. There, it was broken into smaller pieces and transported to a nearby ice house. In the ice house dug into the ground, covered with reeds and straw, the blocks of ice were packed close together and stored there until the summer. When the warm weather arrived, the ice merchants rode around the surrounding settlements to sell the ice. Ice-cutting and the trade in ice started to decline with the appearance of refrigerators.
Duna Museum, Esztergom, HUNGARY
Young water carriers, Montevideo, Uruguay
This photo testifies to the hard daily work of young water carriers in Montevideo, department of Artigas, Uruguay.Throughout the first half of the 1900s, this activity was crucial in the water distribution system until it declined with the appearance of pipelines even in outlying areas of the city.
Barrios Pintos Collection, National Library, OSE - Water Museum, URUGUAY
Lavoir, Daverdisse village, c. 1920, Belgium
Now gone, this ‘lavoir’ was located at the centre of Daverdisse, a small village in the south of Belgium. A lavoir was a public place to wash and mainly to rinse clothes. Washing was a strictly feminine task. This lavoir had water supplied by a nicely decorated standpipe. It filled the first small basin, the lavoir, which linked to a second basin. This bigger basin was used for the washing but also as a drinking trough for cattle.
Musée de l’Eau et de la Fontaine, Ottignies, BELGIUM
Historical wastewater treatment facility, 1912, Romania
The Wastewater Treatment Plant of Timisoara, commissioned in 1912, had a capacity of 570 l/s and a mechanical treatment phase. The effluent was discharged into the nearby emissary, the Bega River. The image depicts the former treatment facility while in operation, which nowadays is still preserved.
Aquatim’s archive, Aquapic Water Museum, Timisoara, ROMANIA
Traditional wooden waterwheel for irrigation, Yellow River, China
Yellow River Waterwheel, also known as ‘Yellow River Crown Block‘, is an ancient water-lifting device for irrigation in the Yellow River basin. It was created by an imperial official candidate named Duan Xu in 1556 in Lanzhou. By promoting agricultural production considerably and solving the water-lifting problem, the Yellow River Waterwheel was popularised rapidly in farmlands along the river. By the 18th and 19th centuries, there were more than 300 waterwheels being put up around Lanzhou, which became a special cultural landscape by the river.
Yellow River Museum, Zhengzhou, CHINA
The mat is ready to be transported
During the flood disaster of 1953, the dikes broke in more than 150 places in Holland. As a result, there was a great need for fascine mats for repairing those dikes. A Fascine mat is a large, braided mat of brushwood. Brushwood is the collective name for twigs and branches of mostly willow wood.. Willow wood has a number of properties that are important in the entire process of manufacturing and sinking a fascine mat - it is very flexible, sturdy and has the ability to float. The mat is made on a piece of land directly on the water. When the wickerwork is ready, the mat is dragged to the desired location and sunk to the bottom with the help of stones. With this technology, the Netherlands has been protecting itself from floods for over 200 years.
Rinus de Wind, Biesbosch Museumeiland, Werkendam, THE NETHERLANDS
Fountain in Trocadero, Paris, France
View of the basin and the Trocadero fountain, or Warsaw fountain, located in the Trocadero gardens, below the Palais de Chaillot, in the 16th district of Paris. The fountain was built for the 1937 World Fair. Every summer, hundreds of Parisians as well as tourists meet on the grass beside the fountain to enjoy the coolness brought by fresh waters. This historical monumental basin created in the urban fabric of the city a highly suggestive scenic space related to water.
Musée des Egouts, Paris, FRANCE
When it rains too much, Lake Orta, Italy
High water in the Orta Square. The copious rains of November 2014 had raised the water level of Lake Orta, in the province of Novara, that as a consequence flooded the main square of the beautiful town of Orta. Two local inhabitants wandered around on a boat to check the damages, while other people watched, astonished and fascinated, those calm waters, wrapped in the warm light of the sunset, in an atmosphere of unreal tranquillity. Location: Orta San Giulio (province of Novara, Italy). This picture was originally submitted to the national photo contest ‘Obiettivo Acqua’ organised by ANBI in 2020.
Fluvio Gioria, Italian National Association of Land Reclamation - ANBI, Rome, ITALY
Monumental fountain in Istanbul, c. 1900
This outstanding example of a monumental fountain testifies to the sophisticated hydraulic culture of the Ottoman Empire. The fountain was located near the palace (now a museum) of Topkapı. The Topkapı Sarayı palace complex was at one time the residence of the sultan and the administrative centre of the Ottoman Empire from the second half of the 15th century to 1856. Author unknown.
Isum Istanbul Su Müzesu, Water Civilizations Museum, TURKEY
Cockfight, Romania
We are in the heart of the city of Timisoara, called Piața Victoriei (Victory Square). The façade of the Opera House, prominent in the background, is a strong, emblematic image for the Romanian Revolution of 1989, that started in Timisoara with street protests in mid-December. The uprising soon spread throughout the country and culminated with the fall of communism. Blood was shed here, as in many other places all over the world, as time and history do not always flow peacefully. Ten years passed and the fluid, dance-like performance of the Saltimbanques, in the summer of 1999, above a pool of shallow water catches the eye of everyone around. Who is going to fall and when? The line between joy and danger can be a narrow one when it comes to water. While enjoying the playful show, the thrill of competition, perhaps we are silently acknowledging water as a part of our everyday life, as part of ourselves and of our many ‘worlds’.
Aquapic Water Museum, Timisoara, ROMANIA
Ponte Rosso on the Molinella Canal, c. 1950, Italy
During the summer until the 1950s the youth used to dive into the clear, cool waters of the Molinella Canal. Castel d’Ario, Mantua.
Ecomuseum of rice fields, rivers, and rural landscape of Mantua, ITALY
Agricultural winter landscape in Valle di Cadore, c. 1930s
This picture documents the ‘buse del sorgo’ (Sorghum dips). This traditional technique of cultivating sorghum was functional for the planting of corn plants in the ground and simultaneously for retaining rainwater and not letting it run away during the Summer rains. This technique modelled the agricultural landscape with a characteristic wave-shaped on the ground which remained visible even during the winter. The sorghum dips were made by women. Valle di Cadore, province of Belluno, Northeast Italy, c. 1930s.
University of Venice Ca' Foscari
Aerial view of ‘the Realm of Thousands Islands’, 1970s
This aerial photograph made by KLM (Dutch Royal Airline) shows what Langedijk and the surrounding area in the Netherlands looked like in 1970s. It illustrates the traditional elongated farming islands where farmers used to grow their vegetables. When the vegetables had been harvested, they used to bring their products to sell at one of the local auction buildings. Auctions took place in large wooden buildings where farmers could enter with their boats to sell their goods directly to the wholesalers. In the past there were more than 15,000 of such farming islands: they were known as “The Realm of the Thousand Islands”. Today less than 100 have been preserved.
Broekerveiling Water Museum
Water and urban sociability
In Porto, despite the process of urban transformation, indelible marks of experiences associated with the ‘old ways’ of villages that surround its central area still persist today. Being a ‘City of Water’ shaped by rivers, streams, springs and ponds, its history reflects upon the appropriation of water and its use in the daily lives of the population, regardless of class. However, we find that in the most disadvantaged classes, and especially for women, their use provides a strong sense of identity for urban memory. The feeling of belonging and identity with places is, in the wash basins, the most obvious, and photography is an excellent way to study the phenomena of these places which have been used over decades. Today, as we experience transformation and revitalization, the old wash houses undoubtedly remind us how people have connected with their social spaces in the past, demonstrating the idea of utility and attachment to sites that we should all keep in our memories. © Parque Patrimonial das Águas, Archive, 1940.
Parque Patrimonial das Aguas
Sant Pere Martir Reservoir, 1910
In 1910 Aigües de Barcelona built the Sant Pere Martir reservoir at 300 metres above sea level. An infrastructure excavated within a mountain. A milestone for delivering pressurised water to the city of Barcelona. The photograph recalls the workers who made it possible.
AGBAR - Museu de les Aigües, Cornellà de Llobregat
The force of the rivers, c.1950
The river Ebro, before the reservoirs were built, had periods of floods and droughts. In this case, the boats loaded with coal could not navigate due to the strong current of the Ebro river. They were moored at the docks in front of the town where many people came to see the vessels and the force of the water. Location: Mequinenza, c. 1950.
Museos de Mequinenza
Águas Livres Aqueduct, Lisbon, 1940
This image shows the Águas Livres Aqueduct, across the Alcântara Valley and the land where the Calçada dos Mestres neighbourhood would be built, in Campolide. The name of this neighbourhood is a tribute to the masters responsible for building the aqueduct during the 18th century. The best known crossing of the Águas Livres Aqueduct is in the Alcântara valley, built between 1740 and 1744 by the Portuguese military engineer Custódio Vieira (passageways and skylights in 1748 by Carlos Mardel) and is a succession of 35 arches, 14 three-pointed arch and the rest are round arches. The biggest one stands out for its span, 65 metres high and 29 metres wide. On November 1st, 1755, Lisbon suffered one of the biggest earthquakes in memory, but the Aqueduct did not suffer significant damage from the shock because it was built on a foundation of basaltic origin. Even today, 266 years later, the Aqueduct continues to see the city grow.
Museu da Agua
Repair of the Alviela aqueduct, 1957
Inaugurated in 1880, the Alviela Aqueduct was used to distribute water to the city of Lisbon until 2010. Over these 130 years there have been several repair interventions, some requiring the water to be cut off to carry out works inside the aqueduct. In this picture (1957), we can see the ovoid section through which the water circulated.
Museu da Agua
Christening
Like all families, waterway life was marked by key family events – births, marriages and death. These major occasions were often photographed, as in this posed photograph. The family is dressed in their best clothes for the occasion. It is probably taken on a Sunday before a service. There are many other family boats tied up below a lock and would be part of the canal community celebrating the event with the family. On Monday they would be back working.
National Waterways Museum - Canal and River Trust
Waterways of Battaglia Terme
Traditional wooden boat, called 'burcio', crossing the waterways of Battaglia Terme, near Padua. This type of wooden boat has been used from immemorial time until the 1960s to transport, among other goods, the trachyte volcanic stone from the Euganean Hills to Venice. The grey stones that still pave Venice today were transported with this typical wooden boats and came through the crossroad of waterways near Battaglia Terme
River Navigation Museum, Battaglia Terme, Padua, ITALY
Fishing in Ohrid Lake, c.1900, Macedonia
Water Museum of Ohrid, MACEDONIA