Pools and jetties at water level
Reaching the Peschiera di punta della vipera is very easy. In fact, the place from which the structure takes its name, used in ancient times for fish farming, is located a short distance from the Santa Marinella toll booth on the A1. Otherwise, following the Aurelia beyond Santa Marinella, just stop at km 66. The structure is easily accessible from the beach, where bathers take advantage of the presence of the structures in the water to have a comfortable support point.
To contemplate the complex plan of the fish market it would be necessary to be able to admire it from an elevated position. However, arriving on the beach at low tide, you can clearly see the shape thanks to the way the waves are refracted near the beach. The structure, which is one of the best preserved along the Tyrrhenian coast, consists of a large rectangular basin, protected from the wave motion by a pier made up of three powerful perpendicular arms. The plant, intended for the breeding of fish and molluscs, built perhaps at the end of the 1st century BC, is divided into several rectangular tanks distributed around a large central circular basin of over 20 m in diameter. The tanks were certainly deeper than today and preserve traces of the openings and hydraulic arrangements that distributed the water in the farm and regulated its flow. Three long channels that branch off from the side facing the open sea ensured the feeding of the plant and the constant purification of the water. The fishpond fully corresponds to the typology described by ancient authors and was certainly connected to a villa located in the immediate hinterland, in an area which is now completely built up.
