The Brevenna is a creek (in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

''torrente'') of

Liguria Liguria (; ; , ) is a Regions of Italy, region of north-western Italy; its Capital city, capital is Genoa. Its territory is crossed by the Alps and the Apennine Mountains, Apennines Mountain chain, mountain range and is roughly coextensive with ...

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 In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...

(''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 ...

Valbrevenna Valbrevenna () is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Genoa in the Italian region Liguria, located about northeast of Genoa. Valbrevenna borders the following municipalities: Carrega Ligure, Casella, Crocefieschi, Montoggio ...

) from the union of ''rio di Tonno'' (coming from

Monte Antola Monte Antola (in Ligurian language (Romance), Ligurian ''munte Antua'') is a mountain in Liguria, northern Italy, part of the Ligurian Apennines. Geography The mountain is located between the provinces of province of Genoa, Genoa and provinc ...

) with ''rio dell'Orso'', which collects the waters descending the southern slopes of

Monte Buio Monte Buio is a mountain in Liguria, northern Italy, part of the Ligurian Apennines. It is located between the provinces of province of Genoa, Genoa and province of Alessandria, Alessandria. It lies at an altitude of 1400 metres. Toponymy '' ...

. 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

. 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 ...

water basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

, so even during the summer, the Brevenna usually has considerable discharge. In former times, this promoted the construction of several

water mills A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of ...

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 The Antola Natural Regional Park (in Italian ''Parco naturale regionale dell'Antola'') is a natural park in Metropolitan City of Genoa (Liguria, Italy). It gets the name from the highest mountain of the area, Monte Antola. History The natural ...

Fishing

The Brevenna is frequented by

fishers Fisher is an archaic term for a fisherman, revived as gender-neutral. Fisher, Fishers or The Fisher may also refer to: Places Australia * Division of Fisher, an electoral district in the Australian House of Representatives, in Queensland *Elec ...

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