¹ Archivio di Stato di Piacenza (ASPc), Congregazione sopra l'ornato (CSO), busta (b) 18, folder (f or P) 1718, document (d) 40, letter to committee b18–f1718–d40. For more information see: b18–f1714–d3, b18–f1718–d40, b18–f1718–d19, b18–f1718–d21, b18–f1718–d24, various letters and reports. The complete thesis for this research can be found at: http://hdl.handle.net/10222/21789 accessed 15 Jan. 2016.

² ASPc/CSO: b18–f1718–d27, gate diagram, b18–f1718–d21.

³ For information on late medieval water systems, see Squatriti, P., Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400–1000 (Cambridge, 1998 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁴ Research into northern and central Italian water systems includes Crouzet-Paven, É., Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth (Baltimore, 2002 Google Scholar), for Venice, see also Ciriacono, S., Building on Water, Venice, Holland and the Construction of the European Landscape in Early Modern Times (New York, 2006 Google Scholar); for Milan, see Fantoni, G., L'acqua a Milano: uso e gestione nel basso medioevo (1385–1535) (Bologna, 1990 Google Scholar), and idem, ‘Water management in Milan and Lombardy in medieval times: an outline’, Journal of Water and Land Development, 12 (2008), 15–25; for Bologna, see M. Poli (ed.), Le acque a Bologna (Bologna, 2005); for Siena, see Kucher, M., ‘The use of water and its regulation in medieval Siena’, Journal of Urban History, 31 (2005), 504–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy. The Medieval Roots of the Modern Networked City (New York, 2005). Zupko, R. and Laures, R., Straws in the Wind, Medieval Urban Environmental Law, the Case of Northern Italy (Colorado, 1996 Google Scholar), examine environmental law in northern Italian cities. Parma is covered by Rossi, M., Strade d'acqua, navigli, canali e manufatti idraulici nel Parmense: dal rilievo del territorio al disegni del paesaggio (Parma, 2006 Google Scholar).

⁵ V. Poli's work on Piacenza water includes ‘Fabbricare con risparmio e senza pregiudizio della Comunità di Piacenza nel XVI secolo’, Strenna Placentina (1993), 49–55; Le acque di Trebbia tra città e contado: norme, magistrature e uomini, dal 1420 al 1806 (Piacenza, 1995); ‘La città di Piacenza nel 1737’, Archivio Storico per le Province Parmensi, 106 (1996), 113–42; Architetti, ingegneri, periti agrimensori. Le professioni tecniche a Piacenza tra XIII e XIX secolo (Piacenza, 2002); ‘Il sistema delle acque nella storia urbana di Piacenza’, Archivio Storico per le Province Parmensi, 60 (2008), 329–41.

⁶ Cademartiri, M.C., ‘Lo sfruttamento delle acque nel piacentino tra XII e XIII secolo: l'esempio delle proprietà del monastero di S. Savino’, Bollettino Storico Piacentino, 82 (1987), 72–93 Google Scholar; Zaninoni, A., ‘Ponti, guadi, porti. I diritti d'acqua del monastero di San Sisto di Piacenza tra XII e XVI secolo’, Bollettino Storico Piacentino, 94 (1999), 251–73Google Scholar. Also see Pagliani, M.L., Piacenza, forma e urbanistica: città antiche in Italia (Rome, 1991 Google Scholar), and G. Vaciago, ‘Il regime giuridico delle acque di Trebbia nella storia’, Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore thesis, 1957/58.

⁷ Fiori, G., Il centro storico di Piacenza, palazzi, case, monumenti, civili e religiosi (6 vols., Piacenza, 2005–08 Google Scholar); Adorni, B., L'architettura Farnesiana a Piacenza 1545–1600 (Parma, 1982 Google Scholar). There are no urban canals in Piacenza today, only some remaining traces in the contemporary urban form.

⁸ Racine, P., Plaisance du Xème à la fin du XIIIème siècle: essai d'historie urbaine (2 vols., Lille, 1980 Google Scholar).

⁹ Curtis, D.R. and Campopiano, M., ‘Medieval land reclamation and the creation of new societies: comparing Holland and the Po Valley, c. 800–1500’, Journal of Historical Geography, 16 (2013 Google Scholar), at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2013.10.004 accessed 27 Dec. 2015.

¹⁰ Gonizzi, G., La città delle acque: approvvigionamento idrico e fontane a Parma dall'epoca romana ai nostri giorni (Parma, 1999 Google Scholar).

¹¹ The Farnese dukes of primary interest to this discussion are Pier Luigi (1503–47), who became the first duke in 1545, Ottavio (1524–86), the second duke, and Alessandro (1545–92), the third duke.

¹² Pagliani, Piacenza forma e urbanistica, 14. Pagliani dates a resettlement at 190 BCE due to population loss from war.

¹³ Ibid ., 74.

¹⁴ Dall'Aglio, P., ‘L'attuale territorio piacentino in età romana: popolamento e infrastrutture’, in Manfredi, G., Berti, L. and Laeaia, A. (eds.), Da Piacenza a Veleia, passeggiate archeologiche piacentine (Piacenza, 2004), 58–9Google Scholar. Unlike the buried urban canals, many agricultural irrigation ditches remain.

¹⁵ Storia di Piacenza dal Vescovo conte alla Signoria (996–1313) (Piacenza, 1984), vol. II, 31–5, 55.

¹⁶ For more on the development of the city of Piacenza, see Bertuzzi, F., ‘Geografia antica del contado Piacentino e Bobbiense: le trace dell'itinerario Francigeno’, in Racine, P. (ed.), Piacenza e i pellegrinaggi lungo la via Francigena (Piacenza, 1999), 133–56Google Scholar; Galetti, P., Una campagna e la sua città. Piacenza e territorio nei secoli VIII–X (Bologna,1994 Google Scholar); D. Ponzini, ‘Ospedali, xenodochia, ponti sulla via Francigena nel territorio piacentino’, in Racine (ed.), Piacenza e i pellegrini, 61–120; Schumann, R., ‘Le fondazioni ecclesiastiche e il disegno urbano di Piacenza tra il tardo periodo romano (350) e la signoria (1313)’, Bollettino Storico Piacentino, 71 (1976), 159–71Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Zilocchi, C., I tormenti della carne, beccaj, beccarie, macelli a Piacenza (Piacenza, 1993 Google Scholar).

¹⁸ Della Cella, G., Delle acque di Trebbia nel territorio Piacentino, note alla sentenza pronunciata dal tribunal di Piacenza il 29 luglio 1902 nella causa civile formale promossa dalla societa del rivo Gragnano e Filzano. . . contro il comune di Piacenza (Piacenza, 1902), 23 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Cademartiri, ‘Lo sfruttamento delle acque’, 72–93, Zaninoni, ‘Ponti, guadi, porti’, 251.

²⁰ Racine, Plaisance du Xème, 4a.

²¹ Racine, P., ‘Introduction’, in Onffri, A (ed.), Il registrum magnum del commune di Piacenza (Piacenza, 1984), vol. I, LIV–LV Google Scholar.

²² Bosker, M. et al., ‘The development of cities in Italy, 1300–1861’, CESifo Working Paper #1893, Category 10: Emperical and Theoretical Methods (2007), 37 Google Scholar, www.CESifo-group.de, at www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/publications/working-papers/CESifoWP/CESifoWPdetails?wp_num=1893&CESifoWP.search=+ accessed 17 Feb. 2016.

²³ The agricultural canals were managed through a system that governed the time and season of water usage called quindicena. It allotted water by day of the week to the various fields that adjoined the irrigation ditch. Della Cella, Delle acque di Trebbia, 11, and Poli, Le acque di Trebbia, 120.

²⁴ Gerrard, C., ‘Context and cooperation: strategies for medieval and later irrigation along the upper Huecha valley, Aragón, north-east Spain’, Water History, 3 (2011), 3–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gerrard notes on p. 21 that water distribution was not just about supply and demand but rather made up of long-term social adjustments where some have more power than others. This appears typical of long-used systems based on water rights. Jurisdictions become complex and overlapping.

²⁵ ASPc, Monograph 990 VII 6 (18) Municipio di Piacenza, Capitoli per il regolamento delle acque di Trebbia, anno 1470 (15 Ottobre) (Piacenza, 1900).

²⁶ Additional archives used in this research include the Acque della Trebbia (AT), a collection of documents that cover the administration of water from the River Trebbia for agricultural as well as urban uses. Many of the types of documents are the same and in fact many are from the CSO.

²⁷ Bosker et al., ‘The development of cities’, 37. According to Subacchi, P., La ruota della fortuna (Milan, 1996), 33 Google Scholar, the population rose to 33,000 by 1618 and then dropped significantly due to plague and famine to under 17,000 in 1631. By the end of this research period, the population had recovered to around 28,000.

²⁸ Della Cella, Delle acque di Trebbia, 45.

²⁹ A good example is ASPc/CSO b3–f2–d24, dated 2 Apr. 1586, in which a home owner requests a licence to construct a conduit from his house in order to deal with rain water.

³⁰ For example, see ASPc/CSO b4–f3–d12 (around 1601–02), in which Gio: Stefano Columbo, who had a garden plot, is given directions on how to construct drainage.

³¹ For nighttime disposal, see ASPc/CSO b9–f1–d20, b8–f2–d9, b8–f2–d10, b8–f2–d15, b8–f2–d14, and for complaints about non-compliance, see b11–f2–d66 and b8–f2–d44. In the case of illegal deposits around town, the contractor complained that his workforce, brought in from the countryside, was ignorant of the regulations.

³² Many of the complaints about pollution were aimed at the meat market. In 1553, the meat market was moved from the area of Piazza del Borgo near San Giorgio to the centre of town right behind the Gotico (seat of municipal government) and the main piazza. This required the construction of Rivo Meridiano, a new offshoot from Rivo Beverora. The new meat market was completed in 1556. The blood and offal then had to flow through drains down Rivo Meridiano, downhill through a dense part of the city, across the Piazza del Duomo, finally flowing past the Palazzo Madama, the residence in the seventeenth century of the ducal widow. The CSO issued frequent orders for canal cleaning. See ASPc/CSO b1–P1555–d8, b4–f4–d3, b4–f4–d1c, b7–f1–d33 and b7–f1–d35. The city sometimes had problems with the contractors engaged to clean the canal, and this resulted in complaints; see ASPc/CSO b9–f2–d55. For more on the meat market in Piacenza in general, see Zilocchi, I tormenti della carne. Kucher also notes that butchering activies and the use of water for cleaning was highly contenious and regulated in Siena, see The Water Supply System of Siena, 89.

³³ In ASPc/CSO b17–f1690–d30, a city engineer describes his visit to a home owner who desires to install a pozzo immonditie (a sewage cistern) and notes that a pozzo bianchi (a white water well) is present on site. While descriptions of sewage cisterns abound in the archive, there are only seven mentions of white water wells over the course of 200 years. The CSO appears to have had no jurisdiction over this particular infrastructure.

³⁴ Some letters to the CSO involve people who produced aqua vita in their homes. They sought both licences for production and the permission to build conduits from house to street or into a street drain and well. See ASPC/CSO b2–f3–d6 and b17–f1690–d17.

³⁵ Prior to the restoration of ancient fountains in late medieval Rome, the city was supplied by an industry of water-sellers who collected water from the Tiber and then sold it to residents. See D. Karmon, Restoring the Ancient Water Supply System in Renaissance Rome: The Popes, the Civic Administration, and the Acqua Vergine, from the Waters of Rome, Occasional Papers (July 2005- #3), at www3.iath.virginia.edu/waters/karmon.html accessed 28 Dec. 2015.

³⁶ 983 memoriali were analysed for information about senders, their gender, status and occupation; 11% were sent by formal consorti or groups; 4% identfied themselves as nobility; 4% identified themselves by occupation, the most common of which was merchant or fruit merchant. Professionals such as doctor or administrator made up 2% of the letters; 9% of the letters came from millers; and 13% from ecclesastical representatives of all types.

³⁷ A total of 28 communications were sent by women. Generally either a woman claimed to be noble with a complaint about service or she claimed poverty as her reason for writing. Pleas of poverty and inability to pay water fees escalated during the plague years of 1629–30. See ASPc/CSO b9–F2–d14, b9–F2–d23, b9–F2–d38 and b9–F2–d38A.

³⁸ ASPc/CSO b14–f1–d76F, 1641 printed note. Other printed documents include orders b13–f1–d1 (11 May 1658), b16–P1684–11A, b15–f2-d11a, advisories, often of work to be done on the street in a neighbourhood with blanks for street names b16–P1686–d1, b19–P1726–d1, b19–P1729. One set of printed forms were licence applications for shopkeepers b18–F1718. Printed receipts were also used with blank spaces for the payee, date and amount in 1687, b15–f1–d8X. Finally, there was a printed set of booklets that covered a legal case that involved Rivo Parente outside of the city, a consortium and the millers’ guild from 1686 and 1687 – Testes examinati ASPc/ Acque della Trebbia e di altri torrenti e rivi AT7–f2–d16, Factum AT7–f2–d15 and Sententia AT7–f2–d14.

³⁹ The engineering reports were often beautifully written descriptions of the locations, types of infrastructure, the problems, the solutions and the estimated costs of the work. The number of reports increased over the years indicating increased reliance upon the engineers for expertise in handling the system. For examples, see ASPc/CSO b1–f5–d1a by Bonadeo, b5–f2–d32 by Bolzoni, b5–f2-d11a by Paolo Camillo, b7–f1–d57 by Trompelli, b12–f2–d11 by Alessio Cremonesi, b15–f1–d14 by Paolo Cerri, b18–f1702–d21 by Giuseppe Cremonesi, b18–f1714–d49 by Bartolomeo Cremonesi. Not unusually, the office of city engineer could be passed down from father to son as in the case of the Cremonesi family.

⁴⁰ For typical gride, see ASPc/CSO b2–f1–d20 from 7 Jul. 1586, and b12–f1–d28 from 26 Apr. 1651.

⁴¹ For examples of capitoli which act as documents for concessions, see ASPc/CSO b5–P1609–d3b, b5–f6-d1, b7–f1-d28f, b7–f1–d28e, b7–f1–d29c, b7–f1–d50, b7–f2–d2, AT2–f1–d12, b13–f1–d51, b17–f1694–d24, b17–f1694–d33, b19–P1733–d9a.

⁴² For a typical tax/solicitation document, see ASPc/CSO b8–f2–d129, it includes several sets of numbers and a solicitation list on inside, dated 20 Jul. 1627.

⁴³ Later tax documents are refered to as distaglio; some examples include: ASPc/CSO b6–P1701–d23, b6–P1741–d5, b6–P1730–d4. The numbers of these documents increased in the latter years of the Farnese period.

⁴⁴ For example, see ASPc/CSO b18–f1709–d3, an expense list for 9 Nov. 1709, and b18–f1709–d4, an expense list for 23 Nov. 1709.

⁴⁵ See n. 41 for a list of capitoli.

⁴⁶ Many of the convocati are located in the Acque della Trebbia collection rather than the CSO. For example, see ASPc/AT12–f1–d7, 26 May 1616, and AT12–f2–d1 dated 18 May 1654.

⁴⁷ Poli, Le acque di Trebbia tra città e contado, introduction.

⁴⁸ Ducal communications include a letter from Duke Ottavio Farnese concerning Rivo Beverora, ASPc/CSO b5–f3–d13, dated 12 Jun. 1562, another letter b3–f1–d5, Jun. 1581, an order issued by the duke on 7 Mar. 1582, b2–f1–d1. Duke Ranuccio I Farnese had three communications, b2–f1–d31 on 11 May 1590, b3–f3–d25 on 15 Jul. 1590, and b3–f3–d26a on 26 Aug. 1590. Duke Ranuccio II Farnese had one communication, b13–f2–d36a, a letter on 9 May 1670. It may be that ducal letters are located in another archival collection.

⁴⁹ Palazzo Farnese is the location today of the archives in Piacenza, the gardens have become a sports field for school children.

⁵⁰ Segre, A.V., The Gardens at San Lorenzo in Piacenza, 1656–1665 (Washington, DC, 2006), 5–13 Google Scholar.

⁵¹ C. Poni, ‘Per la storia dei mulini da seta: il “filatoio grande” di Piacenza dal 1763 al 1768’, in J. Schneider (Hg.), Wirtschaftskräfte und Wirtschaftswege, vol. III: Auf dem Weg zur Industrialisierung, Festschrift für Hermann Kellenbenz [Bd. 3] (Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte 6) (Stuttgart, 1978), 83–118.

⁵² ASPc/AT8–f1–d8c, letter to committee. For more on the meat market and its location see n. 32. Also see ASPc/AT8–f1–d17, ASPc/CSO b13–f2–d27, b13–f2–d80, b13–f2–d87. Despite the ongoing issues with the Palazzo Madama, the Rivo Meridiano did not merit the majority of complaints or the committee's attention. It alone received about 9% of committee actions. Though the larger canal that fed it, the Beverora, generated the most actions for the committee at nearly 20%.

⁵³ Gerrard, ‘Contest and cooperation’, 25–6.