Every design for Forlì

Under the walls of the Rocca di Ravaldino it is easy to picture the Forlì of Caterina Sforza, who held the town as her domain at the end of the fifteenth century, after long years under the Ordelaffi family. Today the same streets are busy with students from the Forlì Campus of the University of Bologna, and the old centre mixes medieval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings with the architecture of the Fascist period.

There is a particular feeling to Forlì in winter, when fog settles over the flat land of Romagna and the Apennine foothills, only a few kilometres away, disappear from view. Summers are hot and fairly dry, and the city lives along the via Emilia, the old Roman road that still runs straight through it. Its people go about their day between the Abbazia di San Mercuriale, the Musei in San Domenico, Pinacoteca and the Monumento ad Aurelio Saffi.

And then there is the Montone, brushing the old walls at Porta Schiavonia, the river every child in Forlì grows up beside.