Every design for Vercelli

In the Basilica di Sant'Andrea, Vercelli shows its proudest face, but the city keeps an even older treasure among its books: the Vercelli Book, one of the oldest texts written in Old English. This is one of the most ancient urban sites in northern Italy, on the Sesia in the plain of the Po between Milan and Turin.

For anyone from here, home is a feeling of flat, wet land under a wide sky: cold, foggy winters, humid summer heat, and rice paddies flooded every summer all around the town. Vercelli is an important centre of rice growing, and people here speak Italian alongside their own Piedmontese, which they call Varslèis. The city became an independent commune in the twelfth century, and in 1228 it was home to the world's first university funded by public money.

The detail that stays with you is water in every direction, canals, paddies and the Sesia, with the Cattedrale di Sant'Eusebio standing over the old streets.