Every design for Cesena

Inside the Biblioteca Malatestiana, the building, the furnishings and the books are still where Malatesta Novello's library put them in 1429, which is why this humanist library is counted as the first civic library in Europe and sits on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. Step outside and you are in Cesena, the Romagna town the Malatesta rebuilt around the Rocca Malatestiana, which still overlooks it.

Cesena feels like Romagna in small: fifteen kilometres from the Adriatic, with the Apennine foothills rising on the other side and the Savio valley running between them. Pliny already counted its wines among the best, and the plain around it still grows fruit and vegetables on a Roman field grid that has barely changed. Its past is crowded, from the Umbrians and the Romans to the popes, the Malatesta and a brief spell as Cesare Borgia's capital, and the town wears it lightly, with a university campus, a busy market life and a sea that is never far.

From the square by the Fontana Masini, look up: the walls of the Rocca Malatestiana run along the green brow of the Colle Garampo.