The VanishedLake

Lorenzo Mariani · Marsica, Abruzzo

Cyanotype combining a satellite view of the Fucino plain with shed snake skins.

The Vanished Lake investigates the disappearance of Lake Fucino, once Italy's third-largest lake, and the traces it continues to leave on the landscape and collective memory of the Marsica region.

Lake Fucino · 42.0028 N, 13.5404 E Coastline: Natural Earth

After centuries of attempts to control its waters, Lake Fucino was drained in 1878 by Prince Alessandro Torlonia. In exchange, the Italian government granted him ownership of the newly emerged lands. Celebrated as a triumph of engineering and modernity, the drainage radically altered a territory that for millennia had been defined by the presence of water. The former lakebed was transformed into one of Italy's most productive agricultural plains, while the Torlonia family established a de facto feudal system that shaped the social and economic life of the region for generations.

The history of the lake intersects with that of my own family. My great-grandfather, Giovanni, worked for the Torlonia estate and died in a workplace accident at the age of thirty-six, when my grandfather was only one year old. Like the lake, his presence survived through scattered fragments, a handful of photographs, a few documents, and stories passed down across generations.

The project emerged from these fragments and from the parallels between the disappearance of the lake and the gaps left within family memory. Drawing on historical documents, family archives, and photographs, it explores the relationship between memory and territory. Developed in collaboration with playwright and actress Stefania Evandro, my aunt, the work reconstructs fragments of both the history of Lake Fucino and my own family history through performative actions staged within the former lake basin.

“This lake is vast as a sea. […] at times its waters rise to the height of the mountains which surround it, and at others subside so much that the places which had been covered with water reappear and may be cultivated.” Strabo · Geography, Book V, Chapter 3

Before its disappearance, Lake Fucino was Italy's third-largest lake.

For millennia it dominated the landscape of Abruzzo, a region in central Italy, shaping the lives, economy, and beliefs of the communities that lived along its shores.

The lake’s presence softened the mountain climate, making the surrounding land fertile and supporting a rich variety of vegetation. Its shallow shores formed extensive wetland habitats for insects and amphibians, while also providing an important resting and feeding place for migratory birds.

“The lake was rich in excellent fish, supplying Rome, Latium, and the surrounding region for more than sixty miles.” Muzio Febonio · Historiae Marsorum · translated from the Latin Tench, barbel, trout, eels, and crayfish were among the species that inhabited the lake. Fishing supported generations of families and formed one of the foundations of the local economy.

Name: Giovanni Evandro
Place of birth: Santa Maria Capua Vetere
Date of birth: 13 February 1895
Father: Gennaro Evandro
Mother: Rosa Fabiani
Height: 1.60 metres
Eye colour: Blue
Complexion: Pale

In 1900, following his father’s appointment as a prison guard at the local penitentiary, Giovanni moved with his family to Avezzano, in Abruzzo.

The area surrounding Lake Fucino was known as Marsica, a name it still bears today. It took its name from the Marsi, a pre-Roman Italic population and the earliest historically documented community associated with the basin.

The Marsi settled in the area during the early first millennium BC. According to local legend, when their ancestors arrived, they found massive stone walls already standing and believed they had been built by giants.

Nec sine Marsis, nec contra Marsos triumphari posse “Neither without the Marsi, nor against the Marsi can victory be achieved.” Appian · Historia Romana

The Marsi were renowned as fierce warriors. Ancient authors associated their name with Mars, the god of war, whom they regarded as their ancestral protector. The lake occupied a central place in their spiritual world, and its sudden floods and violent storms were seen as expressions of the divine forces believed to inhabit its waters.

The lake was fed by the snowmelt from the surrounding mountains and by a single tributary, the Giovenco River.

Pliny the Elder and Muzio Febonio describe how the river entered the lake without mixing with its waters, forming a long ribbon across the basin.

For the Marsi, the course traced by the river as it entered the lake marked the path of Pitonium, a giant snake believed in their mythology to inhabit the depths of the lake.

The connection between the Marsi and snakes extended beyond the myth of Pitonium. Angitia, one of their most important goddesses, was believed to possess knowledge of medicinal herbs, poisons, and the treatment of snakebites. Her sanctuary stood in a clearing within the Lucus Angitiae, a sacred forest near the southern shore of the lake.

1912–1914

Giovanni worked as a mechanic at the sugar refinery owned by the Torlonia family.

14 December 1914

Giovanni was called up for military service.

13 January 1915

Shortly after his departure, an earthquake destroyed Avezzano. Giovanni lost his entire family and was sent back to the devastated town to assist in the rescue operations.

As Marsica came under Roman rule, the lake became an object of political and economic ambition. In 41 AD, Emperor Claudius began an attempt to partially drain the basin. The project aimed to reduce flooding and reclaim new farmland that could contribute to feeding Rome, less than one hundred kilometres away.

The works involved excavating a tunnel more than six kilometres long beneath Mount Salviano, allowing the lake’s waters to flow into the Liri River.

After eleven years of work, the ambitious hydraulic project was completed in 52 AD. Before opening the tunnel and allowing the lake’s waters to flow out, Emperor Claudius staged a vast naumachia, a mock naval battle fought by gladiators aboard real warships. Around 19,000 men fought that day, until the waters turned red with blood.

30 March 1915

Following Italy’s entry into the First World War, Giovanni was sent to the front, where he served as a military truck driver.

1919

At the end of the war, Giovanni returned to work at the Torlonia sugar refinery as a driver and mechanic.

That same year, he founded Forza e Coraggio, officially Avezzano’s first football team, and served as its president until 1923.

With Claudius’s death, the project lost the political support needed to maintain it. Sediment and debris gradually obstructed the tunnel, reducing the outflow until the lake slowly returned to its former level.

The desire to control nature and reshape it according to human needs did not end with the Roman project. The prospect of reclaiming and exploiting the fertile land beneath Lake Fucino continued to attract political and economic interest. In the nineteenth century, this ambition was revived by Alessandro Torlonia, a Roman banker and one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Italy. Determined to succeed where previous attempts had failed, he turned the drainage of the lake into the defining enterprise of his life.

“Either Torlonia drains the Fucino, or the Fucino drains Torlonia.” Popular saying of the time Over more than two decades, Torlonia brought together leading engineers from across Europe and thousands of workers. Using Claudius’s ancient emissary as a foundation, they widened and rebuilt the tunnel beneath Mount Salviano.

The project was presented at the Vienna Universal Exhibition in 1873 and was later celebrated as one of the greatest hydraulic works of the nineteenth century, second only to the opening of the Suez Canal.

13 October 1923

Giovanni married Angela Raffaella Francesconi.

They had three children, Rosanna, Margalicia, and Gennaro my grandfather.

The drainage was considered a work of public utility. In return for financing and completing it, Torlonia was granted ownership of most of the land uncovered by the receding waters.

In Marsica, Alessandro Torlonia was commonly referred to simply as “the Prince.”

To claim as much land as possible, the Prince had the lake measured during a period of exceptionally high water, when it had flooded fields previously cultivated by local farmers. When the waters receded, these lands were included within the new Torlonia estate. The farmers repeatedly removed the marble markers placed along the disputed boundary. Torlonia eventually replaced them with cast-iron statues of the Virgin Mary, knowing that the deeply religious local population would not dare damage or remove them.

The drainage profoundly transformed local society. Communities that had relied on fishing for generations were forced to reinvent themselves as farmers. Many lost their economic independence and became dependent on the Torlonia estate, working land that they no longer owned.

The Torlonia family’s control over the Fucino basin became known as the “three-jawed vice” (morsa a tre ganasce). They rented the land to local farmers, controlled the sugar refinery where the basin’s sugar beet crop was processed, and operated the Banca del Fucino, which managed much of the area’s agricultural credit and savings. The system combined modern capitalism with forms of control inherited from feudal society.

For more than seventy years, the Torlonia family maintained its control over the Fucino basin and the lives of those who worked its land. After the Second World War, tenant farmers and agricultural labourers began a long campaign of strikes, demonstrations, and land occupations, demanding an end to the estate and the redistribution of its fields.

12 December 1931

Although it was his day off, Giovanni was called to the refinery to deal with an urgent problem involving a machine. According to family accounts, an accident occurred and his leg was trapped beneath it. One person was placed under investigation, but the family never learned the outcome. Giovanni died the following day.

He was 36 years old.