When Swiss students planted trees after the flood

On the night of 3–4 November 1966, following days of heavy rainfall, the River Arno burst its banks. The floodwaters inundated streets, homes, churches, museums and libraries. Around 600,000 tonnes of mud were left in their wake. Florence’s cultural heritage was particularly hard hit. Young volunteers rescued books and historical collections under the most difficult conditions. They went down in history as the ‘Angeli del fango’ – Angels of the Mud. Wikipedians are documenting their story as part of the project ‘Heritage Heroes: A project on the Florence Floods’. Less well known is the assistance provided by Swiss forestry students, whose efforts had a long-term impact. Here, too, Wikimedia CH is supporting a research project carried out by volunteers for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

In 1967, a group of forestry engineering students from ETH Zurich travelled to the disaster area. Their aim was to slow down water runoff in the Florence catchment area and reduce erosion. To this end, a partially fallow area above Grezzano, near Borgo San Lorenzo, was reforested. According to the University of Florence, the students planted around 13,000 Douglas firs and black pines. The resulting forest went down in history as the ‘Bosco degli Svizzeri’. One of the Swiss students was Giampietro Wirz, who took extensive photographs of the reforestation work, the people and the landscape.

This collection is now being systematically catalogued. A project supported by Wikimedia CH aims to digitise and publish around 660 photographs in the public domain. The images are to be annotated with details of location, date, people and subject matter, and made available on Wikimedia Commons, amongst other platforms.

However, many of the photographs lack descriptions. This is where the people of Mugello come in: from 2 to 5 November 2026, eyewitnesses will be interviewed about historical photographs at the Casa d’Erci in Mugello. Their memories will help to provide the Swiss forestry engineer’s photographs with captions and further information. In this way, the photographs will also serve as starting points for a local oral history. This will be followed by a seminar for students at the University of Florence.

This Wikimedia project aims not only to digitise a historical photo archive, but also to enrich it with additional knowledge and make it accessible for research, education and further use on other Wikimedia platforms. This initiative forms part of the project on the Dapples Archives within the Innovation Programme of Wikimedia CH.