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In the last 15 years, several Eni-Agip multidisciplinary studies were focused on the buried Messinian-Pleistocene succession of the eastern Po Plain and northern Adriatic Sea. A detailed revision of the biostratigraphy, chronostratigraphy, sedimentology, seismic interpretation and sequence stratigraphy was performed using the very large Eni subsurface dataset including regional 2D and 3D seismic surveys and over 500 deep wells. The new basin-scale geological model of the area is presented in this paper. During the Messinian and the Plio-Pleistocene the eastern sector of the Po Plain and the northern Adriatic Sea were part of the northern Apennine foreland basin. In this time span, the tectono-sedimentary evolution of

Alps and Apennines are juxtaposed within an approximately 100 km-wide area covered by the Upper Eocene to Miocene successions of the Tertiary Piedmont Basin. The Upper Eocene-Oligocene evolution of this area was characterized to the north and west by the propagation of the SE-verging Southalpine thrust-fold belt that can be traced from the Po Plain subsurface until the Torino HillSaluzzese area, and to the south by a high-angle, broadly E-W oriented megashear zone that led to the juxtaposition of different crustal levels and controlled the development of a mosaic of partly independent sub-basins. Since the latest Oligocene the N-verging Apenninic tectonics prevailed in the collisional system and the Tertiary Piedmont Basin evolved as a wide thrust-top basin, bounded to the north by the N-verging Monferrato arc and characterized by a tectono-sedimentary evolution recording changes of subsidence and shift of depocentres in relation to crustal structures.

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