In Emilia Romagna, in the province of Ferrara, there is a town of around 2600 inhabitants which has a record: located in the lowlands between the Po river and the Volano, it is the point on altimetrically emerged land lowest in Italy. Jolanda di Savoia is in fact located approximately 3.44 m below sea level.
The record of the altimetrically lowest point in Italy, located precisely in a named place Court of Sorceresses in Contane, a hamlet of Jolanda of Savoyis located 3 meters and 44 centimeters below sea level. The average altitude of the entire territory, famous for the cultivation of rice and located in the Po Delta Park area, a UNESCO heritage site, would instead be approximately 1 m above sea level.
The town, about thirty km east of Ferrara, in the eastern part of Po Valleywas founded in 1903 in a locality, “Le Venezie”, in the middle of the Ambrogio and Codigoro valleys, a marshy area near the Po Delta which was reclaimed starting from 1882. In 1910 King Vittorio Emanuele III visited the locality, which was then renamed Jolanda di Savoia in tribute to the sovereign’s newborn eldest daughter and became a municipality in 1911. At the time it had around 3,500 inhabitants, which increased over time with a peak until 1951 (there were over 8,800) and then decreased again. The 2021 census reports 2638 inhabitants.
On the contrary, in Lombardy, the municipality located highest in Italy is Trepalle, a hamlet of Livigno, with 2,069 m above sea level. Even higher is Èira, a village located between Trepalle and the Eira Pass, a town with some houses at 2,172 m. Trepalle is also the second highest population center in Europe, after Jus, Switzerland, in the Avers Valley in Grisons, at 2,126. Then there is the mountain village of Saint-Véran, in the heart of the Queyras Regional Natural Park in France, at 2,042 meters above sea level.
