Cesena

 

Cesena (Cisêna in Romagna and Caesena or Curva Caesena in Latin) is an Italian town of 97 190 inhabitants in the province of Forlì-Cesena, in Emilia-Romagna.

Founded around the 5th century BC from the Umbrians, it flourished in Roman times as a center on the Via Emilia, and from that period today it preserves a vast centuriation in the surrounding plain almost intact. It houses the Malatesta Library dating back to the fifteenth century, the first European civic library and the only example of a humanistic monastic library perfectly preserved in the building, furnishings and library equipment, included by UNESCO in the register of the Memory of the world.

Cesena is a center of agricultural, commercial and industrial activities mainly in the fruit and vegetable, food and mechanical fields, it has been a university since 1989.

 

Cesena is located almost in the center of Romagna, halfway between the sea, which is just 15 km away, and the hills, at the point where the ancient Emilia and Romea roads cross. The municipal area, whose surface is 249.5 km², borders to the north with the municipalities of Cervia and Ravenna, to the east with the municipalities of Cesenatico, Gambettola, Longiano and Montiano, to the south with the municipalities of Roncofreddo, Mercato Saraceno and Sarsina, and to the west with the municipalities of Civitella di Romagna, Meldola and Bertinoro.

The official altitude, corresponding to the point on which the Palazzo Comunale stands, is 44 meters above sea level. The average altitude of the entire municipal area is 97 m a.s.l.: it goes from 5 meters of the ditch of the Valley to 480 meters of Monte Cavallo). The territory is flat towards the last strip of the Po Valley to the north-east, hilly with the first offshoots of the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines to the south-west.

Morphologically, the Savio river and its valley make up the main riverbed of the Cesena municipal territory, then flowing north-west to the basin of the Ronco river and the Bevano river, to the south-east up to the left side of the Pisciatello torrent.

 

Climate

Cesena has a temperate climate, moderately mitigated by the proximity of the sea. In summer the maximum temperatures rarely exceed 35 °; they can approach 40 ° (with return times of 18-20 years) in cases of intense Apennine foehn associated with strong warm advections. Winter is generally semi-continental or continental (moderately rigid) in the Apennine and foothills, due to the cold wind that "comes out" from the thermal inversion of the Po towards the Adriatic, while the coastal area is markedly semi-continental since it is more affected by the flow of heat from the Adriatic; the average temperatures during the winter are on average about 2 ° higher in the coastal and pericostal areas than in the foothills located about 10 km further west. Foggy days, on average thirty years, vary from about 30 days on the low Cesena plain near the coast, from 18-20 in the areas close to the Apennines up to 12-15 days in the valleys.

Origins of the name
The etymology of the lemma Cesena (in Latin Caesena) is not certain. Several scholars argue that the name derives from the Latin verb caedo (to cut), meaning "cut place", as well as Cesuola - a small stream that crosses the city - would mean "stream that cuts". Others hypothesize that the prefix caes- refers to the obsolete term cesina ("deforested land"), to which the suffix -ena, of Etruscan origin, has been added. Still others believe that Cesena derives from the Etruscan Keizna.