Telling about the Pianura Veronese means first of all referring to its centuries-old agricultural tradition. The modern traveller willing to know and appreciate the secrets of this territory cannot forget the history of its rural past and its almost completely disappeared rural culture.

In an imaginary back in time journey, to learn about the agricultural “vocation” of the Pianura Veronese, you may find the important role played by the Republic of Venice. During the modern age it favoured the purchase of hundreds of hectares of farmland by the wealthiest noble families. This voracious “race to land-seizing”, a fertile and virgin land, required massive soil improvement operations and deep changes of the settlements: a careful eye can still easily recognize them today.

Thus the complex marshland reclamation soon marked the slow rhythm of the Pianura Veronese history and landscape. The evolution of this area followed the patient pace of human labour. Thus, decade after decade, a different landscape, dotted with farms, courtyard houses, drains and waterways, began unveiling.

From the sixteenth century the widespread scattering of farms further transformed this territory. Still famous is the description of the Pianura Veronese given by Goethe in 1786 when he undertook his long journey to Italy: “The wide plain – the German poet wrote – widens as you walk through it and the wide, straight and well-maintained road goes through a very fertile land: the view stretches among long rows of trees around which the branches of the vine twine up before they fall down like airy twigs”. And further on: “Among the rows of vines the soil is used to grow all sorts of grain, especially corn and sorghum”. With this last sentence Goethe left us a remarkable description of the typical “Pianura Veronese crop”.

The cultivation of rice, introduced at the beginning of the sixteenth century and quickly spread thanks to the great abundance of water, was also of great importance for a few centuries. Nowadays the once used buildings for processing the white cereal remind us of that important chapter of the agrarian history of the Pianura Veronese. Careful and sensitive to the tradition entrepreneurs are slowly restoring those buildings for the tourist to enjoy them.