Editing Adria (section)

===Ancient era===
The first [[Human settlement|settlements]] built in the area are of [[Adriatic Veneti|Venetic]] origin, during the twelfth to ninth centuries BC, consisting of stilt houses in the wetlands, that were then still close to the sea. At that time the main stream of the Po, the [[Adria (river)|Adria]] channel, flowed into the sea in this area. The [[Villanovan]] culture, named for an archaeological site at the village of Villanova, near Bologna (Etruscan ''Felsina''), flourished in this area from the tenth until as late as the sixth century BC. The foundations of classical Atria are dated from 530 to 520 BC.<ref>''The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe ''by Barry Cunliffe, 2001, table 4.</ref>

The Etruscans built the port and settlement of Adria after the channel gradually started to run dry. During the later period of the sixth century BC the port continued to flourish. The Etruscan-controlled area of the Po Valley was generally known as [[Padanian Etruria]],<ref>The adjective [[Padan plain|''Padanian'']] refers to the [[Po River]]; cf. Celtic ''*dānu'' 'river'.</ref> as opposed to their main concentration along the [[Tyrrhenian Sea|Tyrrhenian]] coast south of the [[Arno River|Arno]].

Greeks from [[Aegina]]<ref>''An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis: An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation'' by Mogens Herman, 2004 ({{ISBN|0-19-814099-1}}): "As a long-distance trading community, Aigina was not an active coloniser, but colonised Kydonia (no. 968) in 519, Adria (no. 75) c. 661, and Damastion in Illyria after 431 (Strabo 8.6.16).”</ref> and later from [[Syracuse, Sicily|Syracuse]] by [[Dionysius I of Syracuse|Dionysius I]] colonised the city making it into an [[Emporium (antiquity)|emporion]]. Greeks had been trading with the Veneti from the sixth century BC at least,<ref>''The Ancient Mediterranean ''by Michael Grant, 1988, p. 171: "On the north side of the Delta, sixth century objects have been found at Adria where Greeks traded with the Eneti who inhabited the present Venezia".</ref> especially the [[amber]], originally coming from the Baltic sea.

Mass [[Celt]]ic incursions into the Po valley resulted in friction between the [[Gauls]] and Etruscans and intermarriage, attested by [[epigraphy|epigraphic inscriptions]] on which Etruscan and Celtic names appear together. The city was populated<ref>''A Companion to the Classical Greek World ''by Konrad H. Kinzl, 2007, p. 178: "Adria appears to have been a Greek (possibly Aiginetan) emporion, but it also had a substantial Etruscan population, and possibly also Venetic and Celtic elements (Fogolari and Scarfi 1970).”</ref> by Etruscans, Veneti, Greeks and Celts.

[[Pliny the Elder]], a Roman author and fleet commander, wrote about a system of channels in Atria that was, "first made by the Tuscans [i.e. Etruscans], thus discharging the flow of the river across the marshes of the Atriani called the Seven Seas, with the famous harbor of the Tuscan town of Atria which formerly gave the name of Atriatic to the sea now called the Adriatic". Those "Seven Seas" were interlinked coastal lagoons, separated from the open sea by sand spits and [[barrier island]]s.<ref>Two bands of sand dunes east of the city mark the former sea front in Etruscan-Greek times, and in Roman times. (''Princeton Encyclopedia'').</ref> The Etruscans extended this natural inland waterway with new canals to extend the navigation possibilities of the tidal reaches of the Po all the way north to Atria.  As late as the time of the emperor Vespasian, shallow draft galleys could still be rowed from [[Ravenna]] into the heart of Etruria. Under Roman occupation the town ceded importance to [[Ravenna]] as the continued [[siltation]] of the Po delta carried the seafront further to the east. The sea is now about {{convert|22|km|0|abbr=off}} from Adria.

{|align=right
|[[File:Chiesa di S. Maria Assunta (detta la Tomba), Adria.jpg|thumb|upright|The former cathedral ''Santa Maria Assunta della Tomba'']]
|}

The first exploration of ancient Atria was carried out by [[Carlo Bocchi]] and published as ''Importanza di Adria la Veneta''. The collections of the Bocchi family were given to the public at the beginning of the 20th century and comprise a major part of the city museum collection of antiquities.

There are several ideas concerning the etymology of the ancient [[toponym]] ''Adria/Atria''. One theory is that it derives from the [[Illyrian languages|Illyrian]] ([[Venetic language]]) word  ''adur'' "water, sea".<ref>Adrian Room, ''Brewer's Dictionary of Names'', p. 7. ({{ISBN|1-85986-323-X}})</ref>