Every design for Legnano

On the last Sunday in May, Legnano's contrade face off in the Palio, reliving the day the Lombard League beat Frederick Barbarossa on this ground. That victory made it the only town besides Rome to be named in the Italian national anthem, and the date of the battle, 29 May, is now Lombardy's regional holiday. The rest of the year Legnano is a working town in the Alto Milanese, not far from Milan, cut almost in half by the river Olona.

The Basilica di San Magno is the church most people here would name first, and the Castello Visconteo di San Giorgio stands by the Olonella, a branch of the river, inside the green of the Parco Castello. The former Cantoni and Dell'Acqua cotton mills along the Olona recall the industry that built the modern town. The river itself, long one of the most polluted in Italy, is slowly coming clean, and stretches that were once roofed over in concrete have been opened to the sky again.

Anyone who grew up here remembers Palio weekend each spring, the Monumento al Guerriero di Legnano and the walk along the water. On the map the Olona still splits the town in two.