Every design for Cascina

Cascina lies on the left bank of the Arno, on the main road between Pisa and Florence but much nearer Pisa, close enough that the villages along the old Roman road were once named by their distance from it in miles. That position made it a fortified stronghold between the two cities, and gave the town its identity.

The land around is entirely flat, a river plain only a few metres above the sea, with the comune spread across villages such as Navacchio, San Frediano a Settimo, Zambra and Marciana. In 1364 Pisa and Florence fought the Battle of Cascina here, a scene Michelangelo was meant to paint in a fresco that was never made; only drawings and copies survive. The medieval walls still stand, and in Zambra a ninth-century church holds unusual paintings of fish. The town has a scientific side too: Santo Stefano a Macerata is home to the Virgo interferometer, one of the few places in the world searching for gravitational waves.

If you grew up here, the map shows what you always knew: the grid of the old centre, the Arno along one side, the Villa Isnard and the villages scattered across the plain.