Parco delle Risorgive di Codroipo

South of Codroipo, groundwater resurfaces through the Friulian plain as springs and shallow pools, feeding channels that eventually reach the Stella river. Protected since 1983, this quiet wetland park preserves lanes, bridges and rest areas within the spring landscape.

Why it matters

The risorgive are a defining natural phenomenon of the Friulian lowland, and Codroipo preserves an important example. Across the high plain, rainwater sinks through permeable gravel until it meets less absorbent silty layers; there it is forced back to the surface as diffuse springs, filling shallow pools the local tradition calls olle. Established in 1983, the park protects roughly forty-five hectares of spring-fed wetland, a remnant of the landscape that nineteenth-century land reclamation otherwise erased from the Friulian plain. Its waters matter beyond the boundary, because the springs feed the rogge and streams that give life to the Stella river, which flows to the Marano lagoon.

What to notice

Spring pools hold unusually clear, constantly cool water, ringed by the bands of vegetation characteristic of the recharge zone. Where the ground lifts slightly away from the springs, the damp grassland known as the molinieto takes over, and its most striking feature is the dark clumps of black rush. Wetland plants characteristic of the risorgive landscape grow here. Tree cover changes with the moisture: black alder, black poplar, white poplar and silver willow line the channels, while oak, field elm and maple occupy the drier ground. Foxes, hares, roe deer and squirrels inhabit the area, alongside birds characteristic of its spring-fed wetlands.

Context and history

The park is a twentieth-century answer to a nineteenth-century transformation. When the great bonifica drained the Friulian plain, most spring wetlands were channelled and lost; the Codroipo site survived as working countryside, and its 1983 designation as a park gave the habitat formal protection. The park preserves the wetland from which the springs emerge. Its management and cultural activities remain connected to the municipality and local associations.