The Brevenna is a creek (in Italian ''torrente'') of

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Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

Etymology

The origin of the name ''Brevenna'' is certainly not

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, and may not be

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

or Germanic.

Linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

s connect it to ''brev'', a pre Indo-European

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

meaning ''stiff from cold''. Sometimes the name of the creek is considered to be of feminine gender (''la Brevenna'') (mainly in old documents).

River course

The creek is formed near the village of Tonno (

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

of Valbrevenna) from the union of ''rio di Tonno'' (coming from Monte Antola) with ''rio dell'Orso'', which collects the waters descending the southern slopes of Monte Buio. After a brief stretch heading south the Brevenna receives the ''rio Senarega'' from its left and then turns west. The following part of its course is rather

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the Channel (geography), channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erosion, erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank (cut bank, cut bank or river cl ...

ing and reaches ''Molino Vecchio'', the administrative centre of Valbrevenna. Downstream from the village, the Brevenna turns southeast and, flanked for a long stretch by the provincial road nr.11, it ends up at the

Scrivia The Scrivia, long, is a right tributary of the river Po (river), Po, in northern Italy. It runs through Liguria, Piedmont, and Lombardy. Main tributaries * left bank, left hand: ** torrente Laccio; ** torrente Busalletta; ** torrente Traversa; ...

not far from the centre of Casella. The confluence

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

is 402 m.s.l.

History

The creek collects the waters flowing from a high and

wood Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

y water basin, so even during the summer, the Brevenna usually has considerable discharge. In former times, this promoted the construction of several water mills along its course. Nowadays, most of these mills are abandoned, except for the one at Porcile, which was restored. This mill is not very close to the Brevenna and is located in the uppermost part of its valley. It works thanks to a big water tank using the waters of a small tributary of the main stream. The uppermost part of the Brevenna watershed is included in Parco naturale regionale dell'Antola.

Fishing

The Brevenna is frequented by fishers and every now and then is artificially enriched with

fries French fries, or simply fries, also known as chips, and finger chips (Indian English), are ''List of culinary knife cuts#Batonnet, batonnet'' or ''Julienning, julienne''-cut deep frying, deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin. They are prepa ...

Etymology

River course

History

Fishing

References

See also