> Surface Area: 880 sq Km
> Population: 95.900 inhabitant
> Population Density: 109 inhabitant/sq Km
The Oglio Po Leader+ area is that part of the extreme south-east of Lombardy where the provinces of Brescia and Parma begin. Our zone is fixed by the river Po on the south boundary and by the river Oglio on the north boundary. The territory counts 36 municipalities in the provinces of Cremona and Mantova. The Cremona section is called “ Casalasco-Piadenese “ the Mantova section is called “ Marcaria-Viadanese “.
This territory is a strategic environmental heritage site and a potential environmental corridor between the foothills of the Alps and the Apennines.
THE ENVIRONMENT
Orderly cultivated fields one after another, interrupted here and there by an old farmhouse within a courtyard, a romantic “ pieve “ (an old church is called pieve in italian), a majestic oak tree, a wood of weeping willows, deeply plounged in an unreal silence, where everything seems motionless. So, specially during the Winter and the Spring, the countryside shrouded in the mist, seems like enchanted, between the River Oglio in the last part of its course and the river Po where they come to the heart of the middle Cremonese, Mantuan plain.
…along the river Oglio
In the vast plain, where the river Oglio spreads out, the course gets slower and slower and the banks widen in sweet slopes: here, for a distance of about 70 km, the land lapped by the river has been protected since 1988 as Regional natural Park. The river meanders slowly along and the basin areas are easily detected in the countryside having imposing masses of poplar trees and dense borders of weeping willows. Corner of nature along the river banks: the Lanche of Runate and Gerre Gavazzi, ecomosaic of mortlakes and humid environments at various stages of evolution; the Bine, an active Visitor Centre, the “Torbiere di Marcaria”, one of witnesses of the marshland environments, well know by the ornithologists for the colony of about 330 couples of herons, easily spotted from the observatory; the Canale Bogina, with a cycle path which facilitates the discovery of naturalistic, storic-architectonic and enogastronomic inerest.
…..along the river Po
Along the river Po, are situated the Parco Golena del Po, at Casalmaggiore, a large flood-bed area patched with rich spontaneous vegetation, and a number of nature reserves including Lanca di Gerole near Motta Baluffi and Torricella del Pizzo, Bodrio S. Margherita, near the town of San Daniele Po and Lancone di Gussola near the town of Gussola.
Where the river Po and Oglio meet, one can cross the river over the boat bridge, Torre d’Oglio, an emblem of the river, of its history and of people who once lived there. It is an ideal zone for full-immersion tourism in rural and fluvial nature.
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