On the Via Aemilia halfway between Bologna and the sea, Forlì is the city that has made exhibitions its trade: the San Domenico Museums, carved out of a thirteenth-century convent, host shows every year that get the whole of Italy moving. The genius loci is Melozzo da Forlì, the master of foreshortening of the fifteenth century. It was born as a Roman garrison along the consular road, and in the Middle Ages it was the main Ghibelline centre in Romagna: one of the most stubborn bulwarks against the power of the popes.
Piazza Saffi, among the largest squares in Italy, lines up eight centuries of architecture — from the Romanesque abbey of San Mercuriale to the rationalist buildings of the nineteen-thirties, a twentieth-century heritage studied here without evasions. An administrative peculiarity: the province has two capitals, Forlì and Cesena, and carries both in its name. Today there is a campus of the University of Bologna and an aeronautical technology hub. All around, the Romagna of piadina, and the riviera twenty minutes away.
Chiesa del Corpus Domini · Chiesa di San Francesco Regis · Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Vecchio and 3 more
Tagliatelle al Ragù
20 places to stay · top rated: Agriturismo Torre del Marino 9.5 · Borgo Conde Wine Resort 9.3
Next up: Our Lady of the Fire, patron proclaimed as such after the plague of 1630, Thursday 4 February
Nearest airport: Rimini Fellini, 50 km away
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📅 Every year, on 4 February
Forlì celebrates Our Lady of the Fire on 4 February, with a solemn procession through the old town; the people credited her, after the 1630 plague, with saving the town, electing her patron from then on together with four co-patrons, including Saint Mercurialis.
Chiesa del Corpus Domini 18th-century church in Forlì on the Duomo's square, with three Gandolfi canvases and a wooden 13th-century Mad Chiesa di San Francesco Regis Neoclassical church in Forlì from 1772, built with materials from San Francesco Grande, decorated by Cavazzoni Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Vecchio Small Romanesque church of Borgo Ravaldino in Forlì, with a brick mullioned window and frescoes, later a war s Parco della Resistenza Forlì's Italian-style public garden of 1816, with a pond, a statue of Carnera and a memorial to camp victims. Pieve di Santa Maria in Acquedotto Romanesque pieve in the Forlì countryside on the road to Ravenna, built on a Byzantine church and gradually bu Teatro Diego Fabbri Forlì's main theatre, opened in 2000 with Riccardo Muti: 710 seats in the former Cinema Astra. Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Forlì, but an easy day trip away.
