Every design for Latina

Ever lived in a town whose motto admits it was once a swamp? Latina's coat of arms says exactly that — LATINA OLIM PALUS — beneath the City Hall Clock Tower and two stalks of wheat. The marshes of the Agro Pontino had stood since antiquity until they were drained, and the town was founded as Littoria and built in just 171 days. Today it is the second city of Lazio after Rome.

There is a particular feeling to growing up in a place this new. The first families came mostly from Friuli and Veneto, and their Venetian-sounding speech survives only in some of the outer boroughs, while the centre talks a form of Romanesco. The streets are straight, the buildings largely rationalist, the work of Marcello Piacentini, Angiolo Mazzoni and Duilio Cambellotti, and the sea at Foce Verde and Capoportiere is a short ride away.

The Genio della Bonifica, the monument to the reclamation, is the one to wear: it stands for the drained land, the new town and everyone who made a home on it.