Batteria Vettor Pisani

Batteria Vettor Pisani stands on the Cavallino shoreline at Ca' Savio, northeast of the Venetian lagoon. Work began in 1912 as one link in a broader chain of coastal defences. The fort honours Vettor Pisani, the Venetian commander who led the fleet against the Genoese in the War of Chioggia. What you find is a single-level central block of reinforced concrete, more than eighty metres long. Flanking it are two towers of eight to nine metres and two thirty-metre wings, their walls mixing brick with the concrete. A perimeter wall lined with vertical loopholes for close defence runs along the front. Otherwise the architecture is plain, with the entrance pillars its only decoration.

Six 280-millimetre howitzers once stood on semicircular platforms, backed by a 76-millimetre anti-aircraft gun. Through the First World War the First Fortress Artillery Regiment manned the guns in the Pordelio defence group under Major Nuccorini. By the Second World War the heavy pieces were gone, and four 76-millimetre anti-aircraft guns stood in their place. Alongside the nearby Amalfi battery, the position engaged two British corvettes that had opened fire in the area. Decommissioned, the fort then housed civilian families for several years. The protective earthwork facing the sea came down in 1951.

Today the battery works as a museum of the conflicts that shaped this coast. Exhibitions on the Great War gather uniforms and original artefacts from the units once stationed here. Another covers military medicine and the conditions soldiers and medical staff worked under. Rarer pieces include gas masks from several nations, the asbestos gloves of flamethrower operators, and optical instruments for artillery and surveying. Roughly two hundred fortifications, among them towers, bunkers, barracks and shelters, line the Cavallino-Treporti coast. It belongs to the Via dei Forti project promoting the region's fortification heritage. An installation of original rails and sleepers found on the site recalls the narrow-gauge line to the Ca' Vio powder magazine.