Fucine Lake

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The Fucine Lake (Italian: Lago Fucino or Lago di Celano) was a large lake in central Italy. It was drained in 1875.

The Romans knew the lake as Fucinus Lacus and founded settlements on its banks, including Marruvium. It was the site of the Battle of Fucine Lake in BC 89. However, while the lake provided fertile soil and a large quantity of fish, it also harboured malaria, and, having no natural outflow, repeatedly flooded the surrounding arable land. The Emperor Claudius attempted to control the lake by digging a 5.6 km tunnel through Monte Salviano, requiring 30,000 workers and ten years, but with uncertain success. The original lake had a fluctuating area of about 140 km² which the Claudian initiative may have reduced to about 90 km². A 4.5 km collecting canal was extended and deepened by Hadrian which reduced the area of the lake to about 57 km². The larger 19th century tunnel, along the same route as the Roman tunnel destroyed most of the archaeology of the Roman tunnel, which is why the success of the intermediate Claudian scheme is so uncertain. The deeper Hadrianic canal destroyed the archaeology of the Claudian canal. The final Roman canal has left clear archaeology, showing that 1km from the tunnel it was 7.5 m deep, 19.5 m wide at the top and 4.5 m wide at the base. It sloped to the tunnel at 0.05%.

As the Empire fell, there was a failure to maintain the Roman drainage scheme. Sediment and vegetation blocked the collecting canal. An earthquake on a fault crossing the collecting canal dropped the land on the lake side 30–35 cm relative to the tunnel entrance. Investigations where the fault crosses the canal show that large amounts of sediment had accumulated in the canal before the earthquake. On the assumption that this earthquake would damage Rome it seems very likely that the earthquake occurred shortly before 508 AD when the earthquake damage to the Colosseum was repaired. The lake appears to have returned to its uncontrolled pre-Claudian area by the end of the 5th century and certainly by the end of the 6th century.

Some suggestion, or attempt, to restore the Roman drainage scheme appears in both the 13th and 15th centuries but neither succeeded.

In the 19th century, the Swiss engineer Franz Mayor de Montricher was commissioned by the prince Alessandro Torlonia to drain the lake. A 6.3 km-long and 21 m-wide canal was begun in 1862 and within 13 years, the lake was completely drained. The resulting plain is one of Italy's most fertile regions, and the source of the River Garigliano. Antiquities from the Roman occupation of the land, after the first drainage scheme, became part of the Torlonia collection.

• A. Campanelli (ed.) 2001 Il Tesoro del lago, L'archeologia del Fucino e la collezione Torlonia
• Sandro D'Amati 1960 Il prosciugamento del Fucino, Avezzano
• October 1996 Paleoseismology related to deformed archaeological remains in the Fucino plain Implications for subrecent seismicity in Central Italy Annali di Geofisica
• Cesare Letta 1972 I Marsi e il Fucino nell’antichità, Milan.

Coordinates: 42°0′N 13°30′E