Hydra is a multimedia exhibition aimed to enhance the history of Marmore Waterfall, which is the highest and oldest artificial waterfall in Europe. Romans created in 271 BC the former hydraulic system and the shape of the waterfall. Since then, there have been several project interventions up to the 20th century. The museum offers an immersive experience, showcasing the extensive use of hydraulic technology as well as the cultural, monumental and environmental attractions of the surrounding area.
The Multimedia Museum of the Marmore Waterfalls is a new space that aims to increase the attractiveness of the area of the Mamore Falls, rediscovering values and adding meanings to the visit: a door to the territory, its history and its many points of interest.
The beauty and complexity of the landscape of the Marmore Falls (“Cascata delle Marmore”) and its extraordinary story are narrated through the use of cutting-edge digital and physical technologies (videomapping on plastic models, three-dimensional models, projections, augmented and immersive reality installations), allowing visitors to understand and enrich their visit to the waterfall with interesting topics, and to live a unique sensory and cultural experience.
The “Cascata delle Marmore”, as we know it today, is a work of the ingenuity of man started 2300 years ago. This work changed the hydraulic structure of the lakes and rivers that form it, for land reclamation as well as for the exploitation of energy and for the improvement of living conditions.
The Marmore Falls is therefore an artificial waterfall, with its 165 m the highest in Europe, the result of the work and ingenuity of many generations; a great work of hydraulic architecture, like the great works of European cathedrals, whose beauty has been praised and reproduced by illustrious artists, which with its millenary history represents an extraordinary story of human relationship with nature.
The Marmore Falls shows how man has done his utmost, since Roman times, to design and build hydraulic works, first by draining the waters of the Velino river and reclaiming the lands of its riverbed, then using the energy of water.
Starting from the second half of the nineteenth century this territory was revolutionized for the exploitation of hydraulic energy as driving force of factories, up to the creation and development of the great industrial center in Terni: the territory was transformed thanks to impressive infrastructures, becoming a complex system made of dams, tunnels, pipelines, power plants, factories, where the waterfall becomes the symbol of the city of steel.
