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.
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.