Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The water arriving from Switzerland filled the so-called "Fossone" thanks to the collaboration between the Municipality and CFU of Italia Nostra

Milan, July 2 2020 - At the beginning of via Novara, leaving the city, on the left, and exactly under the blue iron walkway, from today the landscape changes and along via Caldera and via Novara itself a new body of water of Boscoincittà is born, with edges greenery and also a wooded islet: it is called “Fossone” because that was the name of the old Fontanile that crossed these countryside. It will host herons and other birds of passage, but also tree frogs and dragonflies, offering the city a new, unexpected and very pleasant landscape for exiting or entering Milan.
“For some time now the Municipality of Milan has invited the Urban Forestry Center of Italia Nostra to deal with this area – explains Pierfrancesco Maran, Councilor for Urban Planning and Greenery -. This close collaboration gave rise to the intervention that we are inaugurating today, a true operation to increase the naturalness and redevelopment of the landscape".

“This request - adds Silvio Anderloni, Director of Boscoincittà - was an opportunity to place an essential piece of the broader and more ambitious environmental project that connects the parks in the west of the city, from Trenno to the Parco delle Cave at Boscoincittà born 47 years ago precisely from the collaboration, completely new for those times, between the Municipality of Milan and Italia Nostra.”

The Fossone project includes a wetland area of ​​approximately 8.000 square meters with an average depth of approximately 50 centimetres, with a high naturalistic value, which will soon become a habitat for many wildlife species, amphibians and aquatic birds. The water makes a long journey: from the source in Switzerland (Val Bedretto - Passo della Novena – 2.478 metres), through lakes, locks and canals, it travels over 200 kilometers to fill the wetland, in the corner of the park between via Novara and via Caldera.

The lands around the body of water are the subject of specific study: the naturalistic meadows are functional to the ecosystem and guarantee suitable places for the reproduction, feeding and shelter of wild species. Botanists say that there are up to 30/50 different herbaceous species per square meter. In this way, a new space is created that can be used by citizens, a "crossroads" of the main cycle and pedestrian routes which, running alongside the Fossone, connect the parks and neighborhoods of Western Milan.

The Fossone works, co-financed by the Municipality and CFU and through a regional tender for green infrastructures, began in 2019 with a project managed by the Center for Urban Forestation of Boscoincittà; Forest volunteers, schools, scouts, corporate volunteers and individual citizens participated in the planting of hedges and trees.