ADRION : Charter routes from antiquity to modern times.

The Adriatic Sea has always been a busy sea from every point of view. Egidio Ivetich explains it well in an essay presented in this volume and in one of his recent works called “History of the Adriatic”. The traffic in this Sea can be measured according to the number of ships that, before the pandemic, used to land and depart from the Adriatic ports: more than 40.000 in total. An impressive number especially if compared to its Western sibling, the Tyrrhenian Sea whose yachting traffics are more intense. If we compare the current situation with a not too distant past, we can understand how the role of this “liquid territory” (a neologism invented by the memorable Fernand Braudel) - as a system of relationships- has not changed much. An immense “space-movement”, an impressive traffic system made of liquid plains connected through a series of wide or narrow doors. Herodotus, who believed the Adriatic was not a sea but rather a piece of land, was the first one to recognize the ambivalence of this Sea whose function has always been to connect rather than divide.