Capanno da Pesca in Cesenatico

Alessandro’s family has rented a house in Cesenatico for the summer so, I’m inevitably finding myself going there often and I’m surprised to see how my point of view has changed over the years. Cesenatico sounds so different from the city of our daily life and there are really plenty of things to do in Cesenatico.

Surely together with the tourism, Cesenatico’s maritime tradition is pretty evident while walking around the city. What especially grabbed my attention was the “Capanno da Pesca”, which are cute little fishermen huts located along the pier of Ponente. I really fell in love with those wooden houses with their fishing nets overlooking the ocean!

The fishing technique used in the huts were based on the use of large stretched quadrangular lifting nets, periodically immersed in water and raised vertically; it could be as often as every 15 minutes. In Cesenatico they primarily fish anchovies.

This way of fishing was generally called “scale fishing”: an ancient, relatively intuitive and simple way of collecting fish, especially where the waters are shallow and with low speeds, such as in canals and lagoons or marine areas protected by strong waves.