Every design for Campi Bisenzio

Campi Bisenzio lies flat in the middle of the plain between Florence, Prato and Pistoia, a little north-west of Florence, with the Bisenzio river running through it from north to south.

That position on the plain shapes almost everything. The town was once simply Campi, after the fields that covered the land, and Dante calls it that in the Divine Comedy; the river's name was added only in the nineteenth century. The flat, low ground also means water has to be managed, and parts of the territory are left to it: the Area naturale protetta di interesse locale Stagni di Focognano is a protected wetland. On the edge of town, near the Firenze Nord motorway exit, stands Giovanni Michelucci's church of San Giovanni Battista all'Autostrada. Campi has an engineering claim of its own, too: it was here that Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci first built the internal combustion engine. In San Donnino, the church of Sant'Andrea keeps Renaissance works in its museum.

And then there is the Rocca Strozzi, alongside Villa Montalvo and its park and the Villa Rucellai. For many people from Campi the Rocca is the shape that says home, and the one worth wearing.