The proposed itinerary, through the tower of the Quarta Regia, the Church of Sant’Efisio in Giorgino, the Church of San Simone in Sa Illetta, the Museum of the Lagoon at the enclosure, and the Church of San Pietro dei Pescatori in Viale Trieste, traces, at least in part, what the compendium has represented and still represents for our societies.
The lagoon has a very ancient history: from the Neolithic, when our people, while chipping stone, plied the lagoon using reed pirogues and built the site of Cuccuru Ibba to the Phoenician era with the foundation of a freight yard near Campo Scipione; from the centuries of the Roman Caralis that overlooked the lagoon right from Viale Trieste and Via Sant’Avendrace to the tragic end of Santa Igia, the Giudicale capital razed to the ground by the Pisans in 1258-1259, and of which there are still significant vestiges outcropping near the railway network and the Market City of Santa Gilla; again, su Stani tells us of Moorish invasions, conquests, battles, plague and drought, of sunken galleons and the French attempting to land in the city, leading up to 1956, when, in the midst of the Republican era, a medieval law was repealed; the Quarta Regia, or the obligation of all those who fished in the lagoon to give the fourth part of the catch to the contractor.
For centuries the fishermen of the Gremio di San Pietro, with their charter, have watched over the lagoon. The lagoon still hands down to us many things related to the culture of the city. Even today in the language, religiosity, artistic, musical, artisanal and gastronomic culture many particularities are alive and present that find their origin within the lagoon compendium of Santa Gilla. Smothered by the concrete of overpasses and the asphalt of road junctions, the lagoon has not ceased to make us feel its deepest and most intense breath.
