The Po then extends along the 45th parallel north before ending at a delta projecting into the Adriatic Sea near Venice.

[1] The river flows through many important Italian cities, including Turin, Piacenza, Cremona and Ferrara.

It is connected to Milan through a net of channels called navigli, which Leonardo da Vinci helped design.

[5] A minute section of the Po basin belongs to France in the Vallée Étroite [it; fr] (literally, the Narrow Valley) running from Mont Thabor to the Italian ski resort of Bardonecchia.

Although in France, Vallée Étroite is so remote it is essentially administered by Italy (telephone network, rubbish collections, etc.[6]).

The streams are now controlled by so many dams as to slow the river's sedimentation rate, causing geologic problems.

The main products of the farms around the river are cereals including – unusually for Europe – rice, which requires heavy irrigation.

[1] They include (R on the right bank, L on the left, looking downstream): The Reno (R) was a tributary of the Po until the middle of the eighteenth century when the course was diverted to lessen the risk of devastating floods.

Executive authority resided in an assembly of the presidents of the provinces, the mayors of the comuni and the board of directors.

In 1999 the park was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and was added to "Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta.

"[8] From 2012 the park is managed by the Ente di Gestione per i Parchi e la Biodiversità - Delta del Po, composed by the comuni of Alfonsine, Argenta, Cervia, Codigoro, Comacchio, Goro, Mesola, Ostellato and Ravenna.

Their intent was to stop the gradual migration of the Po toward the lagoon of Venice, which would have filled up with sediment had contact been made.

The Fiume Po currently flowing to the north of Ferrara is the result of a diversion at Ficarolo in 1152 made in the hope of relieving flooding in the vicinity of Ravenna.

The entire region from Ravenna to Chioggia was dense swamps, explaining why the Via Aemilia was constructed between Rimini and Piacenza and did not begin further north.

At that time the Po Valley and the Adriatic depression were a single canyon system thousands of feet deep.

[14] Human factors, however, brought about a change in the equilibrium in the mid-20th century with the result that the entire coastline of the northern Adriatic is now degrading.

Venice, which was originally built on islands off the coast, is most at risk due to subsidence, but the effect is realized in the Po delta as well.

Second, agricultural use of the river is heavy; during peak consumption the flow in places nearly dries up, causing local contention.

[2] Always prone to fog, the valley is subject to heavy smog due to industrial atmospheric emissions, especially from Turin.

[18] On February 24, 2010, the Po was contaminated by an oil spill coming from a refinery in Villasanta through the Lambro, the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata news agency has estimated it to be about 600,000 liters.

The major authority on the lower Po was the Magistrato alle Acque di Venezia, first formed in the 16th-century Republic of Venice.

Its domain is the management and protection of the water system in Veneto, Mantua, Trento, Bolzano and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

Between 2009 and 2015 the Po Valley Project (the implementation of the plan) took more than 60 measures, notably to: heighten and strengthen levees, increase flood-meadows, resume natural sediment transport and deposition points, enlarge wetlands, afforest, re-nature, promote biodiversity and recreational use.

In the lower reaches the surrounding basin is generally flat and it is served by a complicated network of small canals linked to the river.

[7] In July 2022, the Italian government declared a state of emergency in the regions Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

The name has been segmented as Bod-encus or Bod-incus, the suffix being characteristic of the ancient Ligurian language of northern Italy, southern France, Corsica and elsewhere.

Herodotus had expressed doubt concerning the existence of a river in Europe, Eridanos, which flowed into the northern sea, he said, from which amber came.

Phaëthon, son of the sun, struck by lightning changed into poplars and exuded tears every year, which is the source of amber (a myth of Pausanias).

Expressing surprise at the ignorance of the poets, Pliny says "There can be no doubt that amber is the product of the islands of the northern ocean (Baltic Sea)" and attributes its introduction into the Po Valley to the Veneti, the last link in a trade route to the north through Pannonia.

The word Bodincus appears in the place name Bodincomagus, a Ligurian town on the right bank of the Po downstream from today's Turin.