Every design for Cremona

Cremona is known the world over for violins. Some of the earliest and finest luthiers worked here, among them Antonio Stradivari, Giuseppe Guarneri and several members of the Amati family, and the craft has never left the city.

The Torrazzo is the landmark everyone names first, together with the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta and its Battistero, the Loggia dei Militi and the Palazzo Comunale. Life in the centre moves at an unhurried Po Valley pace, with the river close by on the city's left bank. The Museo del violino tells the story of the craft, while the city around it carries a much older one. The Romans founded a colony here as their first outpost north of the Po, Virgil went to school in the town, and Vespasian's troops sacked it before the emperor helped to rebuild it.

Anyone who grew up in Cremona knows the Torrazzo against the sky and the sense that music is part of the place. The map holds all of that, from the cathedral steps to the road down to the river.