Every design for Alessandria

Alessandria is known for two things above all: Borsalino hats and the battle of Marengo, fought by Napoleon on the edge of the town. Beyond that fame lies Piedmont's largest municipality and its third city, an agricultural, industrial and logistics hub at the centre of the triangle formed by Turin, Milan and Genoa, with a campus of the University of Eastern Piedmont.

What makes it its own place is the way it is laid out. The city rose slowly, not overnight as the legend has it, from villages such as Rovereto and Bergoglio on the alluvial plain where the Tanaro and the Bormida meet, and it grew into a town of long, wide avenues and big, airy squares. Winters are foggy and cold, summers hot and bright. There are the Cittadella di Alessandria and the Arco di trionfo, and the Museo del cappello "Giuseppe Borsalino" keeps the story of the hat that carried the city's name around the world. Bicycles are so much a part of life that the city calls itself Alessandria Città delle Biciclette and has a museum under that name, and at Marengo the Lombards once raised the tower of Theodelinda.

And then there is the Orologio floreale, its hands turning slowly over a clock face made entirely of flowers.