Povegliano Veronese

At Povegliano the water comes up by itself: the recorded springs number forty-four, and out of one of them rises the river Tartaro. The place was marsh until the fifteenth century, then Veronese and Venetian patricians brought rice and meadows, and from the sixteenth century began what they call here the race for water: everyone dug as many ditches as they could. Many of them carry the surname of whoever dug them — the Liona from the counts Lion, the Draga from the Draghi, the Giona from the Giona.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century the water table dropped by more than two metres, and the owners had to dig the pools and the channels deeper so as not to run dry. The names of these lesser watercourses are on no official map: they are handed down by word of mouth. On the municipal arms, instead of the usual symbols, there is a dragonfly, which around here they call cavaoci.