In Governolo, in the province of Mantova, you found the basin of navigation, that allows to our craft to lower inside the tub of “concata” to overcome the existing gradient of some meters between the Mincio and the Po The dams of navigation were already known by the Egyptians. The most ancient artificial navigable channel seems to have been that realized by the Egyptians, in the III century a.C., to put in communication the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea through the Nile. The idea to open such a street of water goes up again to the faraone Necho II (609-594 a.Cs.).

The opening had to coincide with the first circumnavigation of Africa, that took place, according to Erodoto, under the auspices of Necho II, from an Egyptian consignment that, departing from the Red Sea had to reenter in country through the columns of Ercole. Realized toward the 250 a.C., the channel of the Faraonis or Necho, allowed the transit of the boats from the Mediterranean, through the Nile, the bed of the actual Uadi Tumilat and, through an artificial dam, to the Red Sea. Then the traces are lost. The dams of navigation reappear, in the Middle Ages, for work of the bolognese architect Aristotile Fioravanti (sovraintendente also to the construction of the Building of the Kremlin in Moscow). Improved by Leonardo da Vinci (birth of the basin), they work, still, on the principle of the communicating vases.
SCHEME OF OPERATION OF THE DAM OF NAVIGATION