A few years have passed since my student days, but some questions have stayed with me. To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the flood, I tried to find an answer through someone who had been there. It all began with a message, a contact passed from one person to another. First Alessandro, then Erasmo: names in chats, enquiries, referrals. I was looking for someone who could take me back to those days. Eventually, I found him: Mario Pantano.

We arranged to meet for our interview at two o’clock one afternoon in late October. In 1966, Mario was studying law in Bologna. From there, he travelled to Florence with other university students to help a city devastated by the flood.

What has stayed with me most from our conversation is how naturally he speaks about his decision to go. He seeks no recognition and does not place himself at the centre of the story. He remembers the tasks at hand, the supplies they lacked, the books to be brought up from the basements, the homes to be cleared. To him, helping seemed the most obvious response to what was happening. And the fact that the city was Florence, while his own life was in Bologna, makes his matter-of-fact account all the more striking.

His answer to my questions begins here. With the story of a young man who travelled to a wounded city and got to work. Sixty years later, listening to him means returning to those books, stepping inside those homes, standing beside the people searching the mud for something of their own lives.

On 4 November 1966, the Arno overwhelmed the city. In the days that followed, thousands of volunteers, many of them very young, arrived to help residents and recover books, documents and works of art. They would become known as the “mud angels”. Mario was among them, alongside his brother and sister. Sixty years after the flood, we have the chance to revisit those moments: the human chains at the National Library, the bus journeys, the cold and the encounters that would leave their mark on his life too

Where were you when you heard about the flood?

I was in Bologna, in my fourth year of law school. We heard the news on television, but also through a phone call from a fellow university student from Bologna who was already near Florence on the evening of 4 November, with the Scouts and some inflatable boats.

My brother, who was studying economics and commerce, had recently attended a university conference and had contacts among friends from Florence and abroad. When we saw the images of the disaster, we decided to take action through ORUB, Bologna’s university student representative body. We brought together students from different faculties and began working out how to organise ourselves.

The decision to go was immediate. But actually getting there?

At first, the prefect told us not to go. There were concerns about health, permits and, above all, accommodation: we had to work out where all those students would sleep. The Bologna area had also been affected by flooding, particularly the towns in the lowlands.

But the university and the authorities were very willing to help. The mayor, Guido Fanti, did a tremendous amount. Contact was also made with the government through Undersecretary Angelo Salizzoni, and the bureaucratic obstacles were overcome. The city council provided us with two city buses. We would use them to travel back and forth between Bologna and Florence.

You arrived with an initial group of four. What did you find?

We took the train to find out what was needed and how we could help. There was me, my brother and two other university friends. I think it was 6 November.

Arriving at Santa Maria Novella was terrible. In the car park, cars were submerged in mud, and on the buildings you could still see the mark left by the water, several metres above the ground. There was an enormous amount of mud in Santa Croce.

And then there was the smell. The water had forced diesel fuel out of the heating systems. It was coming up from the basements. But what struck me most was the smell of decay from the animal carcasses at the old slaughterhouse. It was an apocalyptic scene.

Where do you begin when faced with a city in that state?

We wanted to get straight to work, like all the young people arriving. But we were also there to organise further relief efforts, so we went to Palazzo Vecchio, where the relief coordination centre was based. We introduced ourselves to Bargellini, the mayor of Florence, and offered our help.

The mayor gave us a list of supplies to bring back from Bologna. In the days that followed, that was another part of my job: collecting requests from the city council and the university faculties and passing them on to our contacts in Bologna. So many things were missing, even paper. They needed medicines, equipment to work with and food.

Bologna made a considerable effort, providing transport vehicles and drinking water as well. There was a great willingness to help, but we had to make sure that what arrived was what people actually needed.

How were tasks assigned?

We would arrive in Santa Croce, and someone from the city council’s technical office would tell us what needed doing. They might need twenty people at the old slaughterhouse. Some of the stronger lads from Bologna’s university rugby team were brought in for that work, taking on the arduous task of carrying away the carcasses.

Medical and pharmacy students helped sort medicines arriving from all over the world and assisted with first aid. Some of the young women went to care for elderly people, helping to feed them too. Most of our group, though, was assigned to the National Library.

I worked mainly there, but also at the Faculty of Law on Via Laura, at the Gabinetto Vieusseux and in people’s homes.

What was happening inside the National Library? What did it mean to be there in those days?

First and foremost, it meant bringing books and volumes up from the basements. It was exhausting work. We had to empty the shelves, recover the volumes and carry them upstairs, where spaces had been set up for us to work.

We formed incredibly long human chains, with hundreds upon hundreds of people stretching from the basements to the upper floors. The books passed from hand to hand. Then we tried to remove the mud and dry them, following the instructions of the library staff and the experts who had come to help.

It was a race against time. Some people brought the volumes up from below, while others worked in the rooms upstairs. Many of the young women were involved in that part of the work because their hands were more delicate.

What was the greatest difficulty you faced in that situation?

The weight of the mud. After the first two or three days, the water had gone, but it had left behind this incredibly heavy mud that hardened as it dried. Even walking was difficult: you would put one foot on a patch that seemed solid, only to find the next one was soft.

Then there was the cold, especially in the early morning and the afternoon. My brother and another friend stayed in Florence and slept in the trains made available to volunteers at Santa Maria Novella station. There were people from Milan, Parma, southern Italy and abroad. They had blankets, but they said it was still very cold at night.

I was among those who returned to Bologna, partly because I had to bring back the requests for supplies. I worked in Florence for about ten days.

Among all those books, there were also moments that brought you into people’s lives, such as the photograph you found.

One morning, we were sent to clear some basement flats belonging to people of very modest means in the Santa Croce area. I was with my brother, who played rugby and was very strong. We shovelled out the mud, recovering furniture and whatever else we could find.

In an elderly couple’s bedroom, my brother found a silver frame covered in dirt. He cleaned it: inside was their wedding photograph.

When we gave it back to them, the woman hugged him. In her Florentine dialect, she said that at least the river would not take that away from her. It was a very moving moment. There were several moments like that, because we would also find their children’s or grandchildren’s toys: a doll, a ball.

How did the people of Florence welcome you?

We got on very well. We helped families shovel the mud out of their homes and brought plenty of food too.

There might be the odd sharp remark, especially when less organised groups arrived without first speaking to people in the neighbourhood or a local parish priest. They came with good intentions, but the work had to be coordinated.

When we arrived in Santa Croce, we were already at the disposal of those organising the work. In the first few days, Bargellini also assigned us two young men on Vespas who took us from place to place. They knew the streets and introduced us to the people in charge at each location.

At one point, Edward “Ted” Kennedy arrived too. Where were you?

We were at the National Library, working in the basements. At one point, we heard a commotion, and someone upstairs told us that Bargellini was coming with Kennedy. We were busy working, and at first there were a few jokes about why he was visiting.

I remember the scene with a young woman, Silvia, who was there with our group of university students from Bologna and was the only woman in the basements at that moment. She was covered in mud. When Kennedy came down, he praised her work and shook her hand, getting muddy himself. At that point, the other lads felt they could do the same: they went up to him, shook his hand and patted him on the back, ending up getting mud all over his raincoat. There was joking and laughter, and Kennedy thoroughly enjoyed himself too.

That photograph went around the world. Silvia was there just like thousands of other people who were working. The photograph also told the story of what everyone else was doing.

The Beatles feature in your memories too.

Yes, because on the city buses that took us back and forth between Bologna and Florence every day, we sang Yellow Submarine. With all that water, the submarine took on a meaning of its own! Those buses were not suited to the journey, so many of us sat on the floor. We sang the songs of the day, including Gianni Morandi’s.

The drivers took us there every day and had to put up with our singing. On Sundays, we would also stop for Mass at the church on the Autostrada del Sole, the one designed by Michelucci. On the way back, the drivers would ask my brother and me to tell the priest to hurry up, because it was getting dark and cold and they wanted to get home to their families—and, above all, because they had to set off again the next morning. Those small, very human moments are part of my memories of those days too.

What has stayed with you from that experience?

That was, in a way, where my passion for ecology began. In the years that followed, I started working on water protection and anti-pollution legislation. As a legal scholar, I helped compile Italian legislation on the subject and took part in research initiatives. It was a passion I pursued alongside my work.

There were important encounters too. At the Faculty of Law on Via Laura, they needed about fifty students to recover a collection of old books, so we diverted a coach there. That was where I met Mauro Cappelletti, a distinguished legal scholar in the tradition of Calamandrei.

I was writing a dissertation on the right to a defence in legal proceedings. Later, I went back to ask him for bibliographical guidance: he gave me writings and suggestions. In every way, something good came out of the mud for me. My dissertation went very well too.

And when did the work in Florence come to an end?

The work did not end at the same time for everyone. Some continued travelling there by train; others stayed on at institutions carrying out restoration work, depending on their skills.

The efforts continued in Bologna too, but then things began returning to normal, and I also had to get back to my dissertation, which I had fallen a little behind on.

On 4 November, you will be in Florence for the major commemoration of the flood’s sixtieth anniversary. How did you manage to reconnect after so many years?

Around the fortieth anniversary, we began looking for one another again. Some of us had not seen each other for forty years. We met in Bologna, involving the university too, and then returned to Florence.

That process led to the creation of the Comitato Bolognese Angeli del Fango, a very informal group whose secretarial work I was asked to take on. We put together the book Solidarietà e utopia. Bologna, gli Angeli del Fango e le alluvioni del 1966, presented it at various venues and visited schools. Even today, people ask us to share our experience.

We have returned to Florence almost every year. This time, for the sixtieth anniversary, we will arrive by coach again. We will go back to the National Library and then to Palazzo Vecchio. Some will be unable to join us for health reasons, but many friends have responded enthusiastically.