Forlì (Furlè in Romagna, Forum Livii in Latin, also called
Forlivio, Furlì, or with similar variants, in old Italian) is an
Italian town of 118,000 inhabitants, capital of the province of
Forlì-Cesena in Romagna. It is the bishopric of the diocese of
Forlì-Bertinoro.
It has been, since the beginning of the
Kingdom of Italy, the capital of the province of Forlì, after the
detachment from it of the district of Rimini which became an
autonomous province, the remaining territory took the new name of
the province of Forlì-Cesena.
The city, founded according to
tradition in 188 BC, celebrated its 22 centuries of life in
2012-2013. The historian Sigismondo Marchesi, however, dates back to
208 BC.
Abbey of San Mercuriale: basilica located in Piazza Aurelio Saffi,
due to its central position and high bell tower it is considered the
symbol of the city.
Cathedral of Santa Croce: it is the cathedral of
Forlì and seat of the bishop of the diocese of Forlì-Bertinoro.
San
Domenico: suppressed at the behest of Napoleon in 1797, the large church
of San Giacomo Apostolo was the hub of the Dominicans in the city, who,
as early as the fourteenth century, erected a convent which, after
centuries of abandonment, has recently been restored and now it welcomes
exhibitions and exhibitions of international level. It is also home to
the Pinacoteca and the Civic Museums.
Basilica of San Pellegrino
Laziosi, or Church of the Order of the Servants of Mary: famous
sanctuary because it houses the mortal remains of San Pellegrino
Laziosi, patron saint of those suffering from cancer, AIDS and incurable
diseases in general. It was awarded the title of minor basilica by Paul
VI.
Church of the Holy Trinity
Chiesa del Carmine: halfway along
Corso Mazzini, the heart of the San Pietro district, it is known for its
beautiful marble portal (15th century), by Marino Cedrini. Of
fourteenth-century origin, it was completely renovated between 1735 and
1746 to a design by Giuseppe Merenda.
Church and Monastery of Corpus
Domini
Church of San Biagio
Church of S. Antonio Abate in
Ravaldino
Church of Sant'Antonio Vecchio
Church of Santa Lucia
Church of Santa Maria della Visitazione
Church of San Filippo Neri
Church of the Miracle or of Our Lady of Fire
Church of San Michele
Arcangelo
Church of San Salvatore in Vico
Church of San Giuseppe
dei Falegnami
San Sebastian Church
Church of San Francesco Regis
Church of the Addolorata
Church of San Giorgio in Trentola
Franciscan Church of Santa Maria del Fiore
Church of Santa Maria
Assunta della Pianta
Church of San Giuseppe Artigiano
Parish
Church of Santa Maria in the Aqueduct
Church of Santa Maria del Voto
Church of San Giovanni Battista in Vico called "dei Cappuccinini"
Palmeggiani house
Maldenti houses
Palace of the former
aeronautical college
Post Office building
State Office Building
Palazzo Hercolani
Palazzo Paolucci de Calboli
Palazzo Paulucci di
Calboli dall'Aste
Paulucci Square Palace
San Giorgio Palace
Merlini Palace
Morattini Palace
Sassi Masini Palace
Palace of
the Lords of the Mission
Benzi Palace
Palazzo Savorelli Prati
Palazzo Monsignani
In the twentieth century, a large part of Forlì's
architecture was marked by the interventions of Fascism. For this
reason, the city participates, as leader, in the European project
"ATRIUM", which has "the main objective of investigating and managing
the architectural, archival and intangible heritage of the 20th century
regimes, for the construction of a transactional cultural itinerary,
with the aim of obtaining the recognition of "European Cultural Route".
As in many other Italian cities, in Forlì the city walls were almost completely razed to the ground at the beginning of the 20th century in order to free up new spaces for building and to allow the development of the city outside the ancient core of the city. The demolition of the walls was almost total, and only some sections of the ancient wall still survive. The freed space has provided the surface for the construction of road sections that today make up the ring roads.
Although no trace of it has remained, it is obvious to think that
Forlì in the Roman era was surrounded by a defensive circle and that it
was possible to enter the city through specific gates or at least
through supervised crossings. It is not possible to investigate both the
evolution and the structure of the primitive defensive circle, just as
it is not possible to identify the defensive system in the early Middle
Ages, if not to hypothesize, through the surviving local toponyms, the
route of the walls and the location of the medieval gates . To cite an
example, tradition handed down the name of Porta Merlonia, living in the
name of the street that took its name from it, probable gate of the
early medieval walls. However, it is necessary to specify that, with the
passing of the ages and according to the needs of the moment, it was
quite common to open new doors and close others, according to the needs.
In doing so, the memory of many doors has been lost, of others the
toponym remains and only of the most important and the most fortunate
the name, description or structure remains.
According to the
Descriptio Romandiolae of Cardinal Anglico de Grimoard in the city of
Forlì sunt quatuor porte magistre, que custodiauntur: Ravaldini,
Cudignorum, San Petri, Clavanie... But the ancient toponymy of Forlì
included the names of other gates that Francesco Ordelaffi had pulled
down or reinforce: Porta Merlonia, Porta San Biagio (later called Santa
Chiara and closed in 1356 by Francesco Ordelaffi) and Porta della Rotta,
all of these forming part of the ancient Roman defensive circuit. In the
early Middle Ages, with the expansion of the walls, new gates were
opened. The names of Porta Liviense, Porta di Santa Croce and Porta San
Mercuriale are handed down.
There were two gates that opened to
the west of the Morattini bridge, in the direction of Faenza: Porta
Liviense (also known as Valeriana), which stood at the end of via dei
Battuti Verdi and through which the ancient via Consolare passed, and
Porta Schiavonia . The first was closed by Francesco Ordelaffi in 1356
during the siege of Albornoz and, on that occasion, the bridge that
crossed the Montone river was also demolished. Neither the gate nor the
bridge were ever reopened, so the ancient route of the consular road was
diverted in the direction of Porta Schiavonia.
There are four
most important gates, which have marked the city's history and are
linked to the walls erected between the mid-fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries: Porta Schiavonia, Porta San Pietro, Porta Cotogni
and Porta Ravaldino. Of these, only Porta Schiavonia has survived to
this day.
Located on the road to Ravenna, it stood at the end of what is now
Corso Giuseppe Mazzini, once called Borgo San Pietro. It had a real
fortified fortress and in this Caterina Sforza and her children were
held prisoner by the conspirators who had murdered Girolamo Riario.
The door opened onto one of the buttresses of the walls and the
fortress, placed next to it, reinforced the surveillance of the door.
The rocchetta, whose construction date is unknown, was the bulwark on
the northern side of the city and already in the 14th century the gate
stood with the name deriving from the nearby church of San Pietro in
Scottis, now disappeared. In 1360 the gate was partially demolished by
the arrival of Albornoz, while the fortress that housed Caterina Sforza
remained active in 1488 after the murder of Riario ordered by the
Orselli family. Landed again in 1741, only the keep of the fortress
remained intact. It is known that in 1764 the actual gate was walled up
and the entrance was directly through an opening made in the fortress
which served as a civic gate. In 1862 the last remains of the gate and
the rock were demolished to make way for the new urban gate, called
Barriera Mazzini, which the engineer Callimaco Missirini, built at the
expense of the municipality, designed in neoclassical forms and which
was opened to transit on 5 June 1864. It was used as a waiting room for
the tramway that linked Ravenna to Meldola and, from 1901, it was used
as a post office. This gate was completely destroyed in the first aerial
bombardment of the city in World War II on May 19, 1944 and was never
rebuilt.
It is important to note that in earlier times the exit
in the direction of Ravenna was via the Porta di Santa Chiara, of which
today only a square dedicated to it remains.
The gate stood on what was called Strada petrosa - then Borgo
Cotogni, more recently Corso Vittorio Emanuele and currently Corso della
Repubblica - and was to guard the road in the direction of Cesena. Until
the first years of the 20th century it housed the customs gate, to then
be replaced, during the twenty years, by the twin Bazzani and Benini
buildings.
The chronicles recall how often the parades and solemn
entrances into the city took place through the Cotogni gate; among these
the entry of Julius II and the Riarios. Until 1825 the bust of Cardinal
Stefano Augustini was placed near the door, now located in the art
gallery.
The Barrier and the annexed buildings were built to a
design by the architect Giacomo Santarelli in 1825, following the
demolition of the ancient Porta Cotogni, and assumed the name of
Barriera Vittorio Emanuele with the function of customs gate.
In
1906, with the start of excavations for the construction of the aqueduct
systems, the remains and foundations of the tower and the nearby
fortified areas were discovered.
It was the door that opened towards San Martino in Strada and, from
there, towards Florence. The gate was located at the end of the current
Corso Diaz, but until the 1300s the walls were further back and
therefore the gate was located about halfway along the current course
and was called Porta Merlonia. Between the 19th and 20th centuries it
also had the name of Barriera Aurelio Saffi.
At the end of Corso
Diaz, on the left side, there was a fortress, called Rocca Vecchia,
because it was later demolished with the exception of a tower that
survived until the 1600s. It is probable that he was also called
Ravaldino, hence the name of the gate and the fortress, which still
exists today, and which is called Rocca di Ravaldino. Different sources
state that the name derives from the castle that once stood in the
current hamlet of Ravaldino in Monte, about 10 km from the city.
According to Novacula's chronicle, the gate was built in 1494 at the
behest of Caterina Sforza who entrusted the council of elders with the
execution of the work. The construction of the gate, with the tracing of
a ditch that reached up to the Torre dei quadri, became necessary on the
occasion of the camp set up by the French near San Martino and in other
nearby hamlets.
The door was then left to fall into disuse and,
no longer subject to maintenance, began to collapse. In the earthquake
of 1870 it suffered further damage and, having become unsafe and
dangerous, it was decided to knock down the central part. The buildings
necessary to keep the customs offices active were left standing,
replaced by the new barrier, called Barriera Saffi, built in 1874 to a
design by the engineer Gustavo Guerrini.
At the turn of the
thirties, the barrier was also demolished to arrange the building
according to the lines of the master plan which provided for an
expansion of the city beyond the boundaries of the old wall.
The only door that survived the time guarded the road in the direction of Faenza. In the past it was flanked by towers that protected it. It is probable that it was built on the site where the ancient Roman city also opened its road in the direction of Faenza, even if it has been remodeled and rebuilt several times. The current structure dates back to 1743 although some structures were demolished in the early twentieth century, such as the entrance hall behind it.
Piazza Aurelio Saffi
At the time of the Roman forum, Piazza
Aurelio Saffi was just a large space on the edge of the centuriation,
along the Via Emilia towards Rimini.
It became, as it still is
today, the central place of the city in the Middle Ages, with the name
of Campo dell'Abate (the reference is to the Abbey of San Mercuriale)
and then of Piazza Maggiore.
After the unification of Italy, it
was dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II and later to Aurelio Saffi,
replacing the column of the Madonna (moved to the cathedral) with a
monument dedicated to Saffi. At the end of the Second World War, during
the permanence of the Anglo-American troops in Forlì (following the
liberation of the city from the Nazi-fascists), the square was renamed
St. Andrew's Square ("piazza di S. Andrea"). With the return to
normality, the war damages were healed and the monument to Saffi,
destroyed during the bombings, was restored.
The result is a
square that Antonio Paolucci has defined as "a metaphysical scenario à
la Giorgio De Chirico".
Overlooking the square:
The Romanesque
Church of San Mercuriale, which is, together with its very high bell
tower, the symbolic monument of the city
The Post Office building
The Palazzo Comunale, with walls full of history and art
The Palace
of the Podesta
The Albertini Palace.
Street of the Towers
This is the road that connects Piazza Saffi with Piazza Ordelaffi and
Piazza del Duomo, skirting the northern side of the Palazzo del Comune.
Traveling eastwards, it grants a suggestive view of the Abbey of San
Mercuriale, while, in the other direction, the road overlooks the Church
of Corpus Domini, with the adjacent Monastery.
At the Palazzo
della Prefettura, on the same side, the street opens onto Piazza delle
Erbe, with its agricultural food market.
Piazza del Duomo and
Piazza Ordelaffi
Piazza del Duomo/piazza Ordelaffi: the two adjoining
open spaces are dominated by the building of the Duomo, formerly the
church of Santa Croce, the city's cathedral.
To the north of Piazza
Ordelaffi is the imposing Palazzo Piazza Paulucci or Paulucci-Piazza,
from the name of the two ancient noble families that already owned it,
now the seat of the Prefecture: it is a 17th century palace built in
order to recall the Palazzo del Lateran and the Palazzo Farnese, in
Rome.
In the center of Piazza del Duomo stands the votive column of
the Madonna del Fuoco, protector of the city; it was originally erected
in Piazza Saffi, from where it was moved at the end of the 19th century
to make way for the memorial monument of the Forlì patriot Aurelio
Saffi.
On 1 May 2007, a part of Piazza del Duomo took the name of
Piazza Giovanni Paolo II, in memory of the visit that the Pope made to
Forlì on 8 May 1986.
Course of the Republic
Corso della
Repubblica, perhaps the main modern road of the city, constitutes the
branch of the Via Emilia towards the east inside the historical centre.
It is the backbone of the district traditionally called "Borgo Cotogni"
for an ancient settlement of the Goths (from "Gotogni") who had settled
there in the fifth century. It looks like a long straight road with a
modern look, at the end of which you can see the obelisk of the war
memorial in piazzale della Vittoria. In the 1930s it was called Corso
Vittorio Emanuele.
Right at the beginning of the Corso, almost still
in Piazza Saffi, you can see the beautiful bulk, with an elliptical
plan, of the Church of Santa Maria della Visitazione, better known as
the Church of the Suffragio.
There also stands, a little further on
on the opposite side, the baroque church of Santa Lucia, protector of
sight and celebrated on 13 December.
The municipal library (with the
historic Piancastelli collection) and the headquarters of the main
municipal museums also overlook it, including the art gallery in the
imposing Palazzo Merenda, formerly the seat of the ancient city
hospital. Also in the Palazzo del Merenda in the rooms of the Albicini
armory are visible frescoes (1924) by the Forlì painter Francesco
Olivucci (1899-1984).
In Corso della Repubblica there is also the
prestigious Higher School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and
Translators, a faculty of the University of Bologna.
Perhaps the only
complex built in Forlì after the war by an international master of
architecture is the Hotel della Città et de la Ville with the Centro
Studi Fondazione Livio e Maria Garzanti. It is the work of the Milanese
architect Gio Ponti commissioned by Aldo Garzanti, the famous publisher.
Designed in 1953 and finished in 1957, with its inverted slopes,
hexagonal windows, open spaces and the breath between the bodies, it is
an icon of the fifties.
Corso Giuseppe Mazzini
This avenue, a
street of arcades and shops, connects Piazza Saffi with Via Ravegnana
(for Ravenna), to the north, where the Porta di San Pietro once stood.
The ancient church of San Pietro in Scottis, now disappeared, a refuge
for Scottish pilgrims, gives its name to the district "San Pietro".
This avenue, a street of arcades and shops, connects Piazza Saffi
with Via Ravegnana (for Ravenna), to the north, where the Porta di San
Pietro once stood. The ancient church of San Pietro in Scottis, now
disappeared, a refuge for Scottish pilgrims, gives its name to the
district "San Pietro".
As soon as you enter the Corso, coming
from Piazza Saffi, after the Palazzo degli Uffici Statali, you will find
the Torre Numai in a street on the left, a reminder of an ancient noble
family.
Important is the Church of the Carmine, which houses the
Carmelite convent: the entrance has a valuable frieze in Istrian marble,
originally an embellishment of the entrance to the Cathedral.
Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi
This is the longest course, which from
Piazza Saffi arrives at Porta Schiavonia and forms the part of Via
Emilia towards the west, i.e. towards Faenza and Bologna, crossing the
oldest area of the city, where notable stately buildings have been
preserved to this day. It is the oldest street in the city, around which
Forlì began to develop. The name "Schiavonia", still extended to the
entire district (the old "Borgo Schiavonia"), derives from the memory of
the slaves from Forlì deported to Spain by the barbarian Alaric and
freed by the bishop Mercuriale. To magnify the Risorgimento epic, on the
proposal of Tito Pasqui from Forlì, the course was then dedicated to
Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Corso Armando Diaz
This course leads from
Piazza Saffi to the Piazzale di Porta Ravaldino (gate that no longer
exists), and to the Viale dell'Appennino which, towards the south,
connects the city to Predappio and Castrocaro Terme, then heading to
Florence. It is the backbone of the "Ravaldino" district, a name of
uncertain origin, but known since the Middle Ages. There is also a
locality called "Ravaldino in Monte" in the foothills of Forlì.
Near the center stands the Orsi Mangelli palace
Also at the beginning
of the Corso is the Municipal Theater named after the Forlì playwright
Diego Fabbri.
Further on is the Church of Sant'Antonio Vecchio (10th
century), today the Memorial of the Fallen
Also interesting is the
Church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Ravaldino, from the early 18th century,
which houses, among other beautiful paintings and wooden statues, a
Visitation by Marco Palmezzano; there is also an organ by Alessio
Verati.
The final stretch flanks the mighty Rocca di Ravaldino, a
central citadel in the defensive system of the medieval walls already at
the time of the Ordelaffi and the center of government, in particular
under Caterina Sforza: the Rocca was the main theater of battle with the
French and papal troops of Cesare Borgia. In The Art of War, Machiavelli
describes the Rocca thus: "It was all that fortress full of places to
withdraw from one into the other, because there was first the citadel,
from that to the fortress was a ditch, so that it passed through a
drawbridge; the fortress was divided into three parts, and each part was
divided by ditches and water from the other, and by bridges one passed
from one place to another".
Senator Roberto Ruffilli lived in this
street where he was killed in his house by the red brigades of the
fighting communist party.
Victory square
Continuing along
Corso della Repubblica from Piazza Aurelio Saffi, you arrive at Piazzale
della Vittoria, which acts both as a large roundabout and as a junction
between Corso della Repubblica, Viale Roma, Via Corridoni, Viale
Matteotti and Viale della Libertà. In the center emerges on a high
column the war memorial, built in 1932. The building of the former
aeronautical college, in rationalist style, now used as schools,
overlooks the square. On both sides of the entrance to Corso della
Repubblica there are the twin buildings, built in 1933. The Faculty of
Economics of the University of Bologna and the national institute for
insurance against accidents at work also overlook it. Furthermore, from
the square, you can access the monumental entrance to the park of the
Resistance.
Avenue of Liberty
Continuing from piazzale della
Vittoria towards the railway station, cross viale della Libertà. With a
width of forty meters and orientation perpendicular to the Via Emilia,
it presents a large number of buildings that constitute important
examples of the various architectural styles of the Ventennio.
Buildings of architectural interest located on the avenue:
Inexpensive houses for post and telegraphs
Cheap houses of railway
workers
Villa Boni
Edmondo De Amicis primary school
Headquarters of the Industrial Technical Institute
Former Casa del
Balilla
Palace of the former aeronautical college
Before the walls were demolished, a substantial area close to the
walls formed a ring, inside the walls themselves, almost complete at
360°, of public green intended for cultivation. These gardens, present
in the Middle Ages, had to provide the necessary area to be cultivated
and therefore produce the necessary sustenance in the event of a
possible siege of the city. This green area for the city has always been
maintained until the beginning of the twentieth century when, with the
decision to expand the city beyond the walls, they began to be built.
Today only a few sections of these gardens remain.
The municipal
and city territory is decidedly rich in small green areas and four large
public parks:
Via Dragoni park
Resistance Park
Franco August
Urban Park
Paul Harris Park
In fact, the city is equipped with
many green areas and parks that reach a total area of 300 hectares.
Many old mulberry trees are still present in the municipal area, the
last witnesses of a period in which this type of tree was widespread.
Its leaves were collected and used to feed the silkworms, whose breeding
was flourishing and fed the solid silk industry.
Some city
streets and other extra-urban streets are then characterized on the
sides by rows of trees, such as those of the via lughese (the road that
leads to Lugo) and the via cervese (the road that leads to Cervia),
although for years this tree and crops questioned for reasons of road
safety.
On the basis of regional law 2 / 1977, some valuable
monumental trees were also identified, including a downy oak over two
hundred years old, 3 black poplars over 130 years old and an oriental
plane tree over 170 years old. The latter is actually the best known,
admired and known tree and is remembered as the tree of Giosuè Carducci.
Of the noteworthy trees, 2 fruit trees can also be mentioned: a
centuries-old jujube and a sixty-year-old apricot tree.
There are
also 3 forest wrecks of notable naturalistic importance present in the
municipal area. The most important is the Selva di Ladino, owned by the
Municipality, and considered the survivor of the Selva Litana. The
integrity of this wood is however undermined by the provincial road (via
del partigiano) which cuts it in two. average height of over 15 meters.
The Selva di Ladino merges with the spontaneous vegetation of the nearby
Montone river, constituting a botanical naturalistic site of
considerable importance and recognized as a Site of Community Importance
(SIC).
There is another small wood located in the hamlet of
Ravaldino in Monte, younger than that of Ladino.
A 3rd wooded
site is an oak grove located in Farazzano, on the border with the
Meldola area, which has Turkey oaks around 80 years old.
A park
of notable naturalistic interest is the protective oasis of Magliano,
established in 1984 by the provincial administration for the protection
of aquatic birds. This area extends for 680 hectares and is included
between the municipalities of Forlì, Forlimpopoli and Bertinoro.
A little-known green space is the one located on the banks of the Ronco
river and which is called Ronco lido. At the beginning of the 19th
century, the people of Forlì, who didn't have a sea nearby, thought of
using the banks of the river as a substitute for the sea. A bathing area
consisting of a small beach, a road and small bathing establishments
were thus built on the bank of the river.
Origins and ancient times
The locality where Forlì
stands was inhabited since the Paleolithic, as evidenced by the
findings of Monte Poggiolo, with numerous finds dated to about
800,000 years ago. In 2010, during the construction of the new city
prison, a large prehistoric necropolis dating back to 4 000 years
ago was found, which shows that the area was already permanently
inhabited at that time.
The city actually arose on an ancient
commercial settlement, located on the border line that separated the
territory controlled by the Lingoni from that of the Senones and
called by the Etruscans Ficline (Figline), that is the land of
potters (but also of brick production), for the ceramics that were
produced there and that will be famous also in the XIV-XVI centuries. Indeed, in the fifteenth century, the production of Forlì "beat
that of nearby Faenza for fame and prestige, which became famous
only from the last century onwards".
The current name is of
Roman origin, Forum Livii: the castrum was probably founded in 188
BC, according to tradition, by Gaius Livio Salinatore, son of the
consul Marco Livio Salinatore who, in 207 BC, defeated the
Carthaginian army led by Hasdrubal in the battle of the Metauro. The
city, therefore, celebrated 22 centuries of history in 2012. Few
remains of the Roman city remain, especially underground (bridges,
paved streets, foundations). The forum must have been at the height
of the current Piazza Melozzo, while it is probable the existence of
a castrum in the area of the Romiti, on the way to Faenza. The
castrum called Livia and the forum called Livii re-founded the
Etruscan Ficline, giving rise to Forlì. An important pagus, dating
back to the years in which Constantius II was Emperor, was found
near the Pieveacquedotto, where Trajan's aqueduct passed.
An
excavation conducted in 2003-2004, in via Curte, has brought to
light important remains from the Roman era: it is a housing sequence
that goes from the Republican age to the late ancient age. This
allowed us to understand what life in the ancient Forum Livii could
be like.
Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Roman
Empire, after the brief dominion of Odoacer, Forlì was part of the
kingdom of the Ostrogoths, then of the empire of Byzantium. It
remained Byzantine at the time of the Lombard invasion, in the sixth
century, then it was part of the donations of Pipino the Short to
the Church.
Born, obviously for defense reasons, on an island
at the confluence of two rivers, Forlì was however long troubled by
floods, so, around 1050, the system of the waterways was rearranged
with various engineering works that moved away from the built-up
area the risk of new flooding.
The city was the protagonist
of the events in the Romagna area during the Middle Ages: the
complex coat of arms alludes to different moments in its history:
the city was given the vermilion shield from the Romans, on which a
white cross; a second shield, white, crossed by the word LIBERTAS,
testifies to the periods in which the city became a republic (the
first time in 889, the last in 1405): the colors of the city,
therefore, are white and red ; the Swabian eagle in the field of
gold was instead granted by Frederick II, for the help given him in
the capture of Faenza (1241), since Forlì sided with the
Ghibellines. These merits allowed the Forlì to then intercede in
favor of the Faenza and to convince Federico to spare the city of
Faenza, which he intended to destroy instead.
The Emperor
also gave the city of Forlì, on the occasion, a wide municipal
autonomy, including the right to mint coins.
The transition
from the free commune to the lordship was rather troubled: among
others, the attempts of Simone Mastaguerra, Maghinardo Pagani and
Uguccione della Faggiola emerged, but the success in the city domain
smiled on the Ordelaffi family dynasty, which managed, albeit with
some interruption, the city from the end of the thirteenth to the
beginning of the sixteenth.
In 1353, Pope Innocent VI from
the Avignonese captivity commissioned his Vicar, Cardinal Egidio
Albornoz, to reclaim the Romagne which were put to fire and sword.
In 1355, in order to definitively defeat the Ghibelline resistance
led by the Ordelaffi, Innocent VI launched the Crusade against the
Forlivesi led by Louis I of Hungary. The crusade ended in 1359 with
an agreement between the Ordelaffi and the pope, which placed
Romagna under the power of the Papal State.
From a technical
point of view, it can be pointed out that Forlì, in the fourteenth
century, was one of the first cities to equip itself with a
mechanical clock, located in the civic tower.
Medieval Forlì also saw the presence of a thriving community of
Jews: there is news of the existence of a Jewish school in the city
since the thirteenth century, while the oldest Italian example of a
Jewish heraldic image (1383) comes from Forlì; furthermore, a civic
statute of Forlì of 1359 testifies to the stability of the presence
of the Jews and their pews. For example, it is known that, in 1373,
Bonaventure Council and partner lent 8,000 ducats to Amedeo VI of
Savoy, having the crown and other values as a guarantee. It should
also be noted that, in the Middle Ages, the Jews in Forlì could own
land and buildings. With the sixteenth century, however, the
possibility was restricted to buildings only, also due to the
passage of the city to the direct dominion of the Church State.
Two illustrated Hebrew prayer books, respectively from Bertinoro
and Forlì, date back to the years 1390 and 1393 and are currently
preserved in Great Britain.
It should also be remembered that
Rabbi Hillel da Verona worked and died in Forlì, who with his
writings could also influence Dante's imagination, a guest in the
city shortly after his death.
Forlì was therefore an
important center of Jewish business and cultural life.
Of
note, in this regard, is the important congress of the delegates of
the Jewish communities of Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, the cities of
Romagna and Tuscany, as well as Rome, which was convened in Forlì on
18 May 1418: there they made decisions on the behavior (ethical and
social) that the Jews should have and a delegation was sent to Pope
Martin V for the confirmation of the old privileges and the granting
of new ones.
In the Middle Ages what would become an
important tradition in the field of medicine also began. In fact,
Forlì, like all the early medieval Romagna, keeps alive the
knowledge of classical culture, especially in the medical field, as
a Byzantine land. Thus the Carolingians themselves "were able to
benefit from the medical knowledge present in the Ravenna
exarchate". In the following centuries, then, we will find doctors
of great importance forlì, such as Iacopo della Torre, better known
as Iacopo da Forlì.
On 11 April 1425 Alberico (or Alberigo)
from Barbiano opened the first secular school in Forlì: the first
student was Cristiano, the son of the painter and historian Giovanni
di Mastro Pedrino.
Modern age
The fifteenth century
closed, for Forlì, with an important cultural innovation: in 1495,
in fact, the printing house of Paolo Guarini and Giovanni Giacomo
Benedetti opened in the city.
During the Renaissance Forlì
boasted many connections with Italian national history: his lady was
Caterina Sforza, who, widow of Girolamo Riario (nephew of Pope
Sixtus IV), married, in 1497, Giovanni de 'Medici (called "il
Popolano"), marriage from which Ludovico (later Giovanni), known as
Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, was born the following year, the famous
captain of fortune, father of that Cosimo I de 'Medici who will be
the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. Caterina, despite a heroic
resistance in the fortress of Ravaldino, in Forlì, was defeated by
Cesare Borgia in the expansion plan of the papal possessions in
Romagna.
After an ephemeral attempt to return the Ordelaffi,
Pope Julius II, passing through Forlì in 1506, managed to impose, at
least temporarily, peace between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
Back under papal dominion, Forlì constituted the center of papal
Romagna. The papal government guaranteed the city and its
inhabitants a period of peaceful civil life, especially after the
establishment of the Ninety Pacifici judiciary, commissioned, in
1540, by Giovanni Guidiccioni. In this regard, Adamo Pasini writes:
"Whatever the judgment one wants to give of the government that came
to consolidate in that century, the fact is that the sixteenth
century marks the rise of our aristocracy, of our construction, of
our literature. the three sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries have died for history, to dedicate volumes to the
thirteenth - fourteenth - fifteenth centuries, means giving too much
importance to the civil war and little or no importance to
economics, study, work ".
As proof of what Pasini says, in
1522 a special college was born in Forlì that graduated to the
office of notary.
We should remember the bishops Pier
Giovanni Aleotti (1551-1563) and Antonio Giannotti (1563-1578),
whose incisive action led the city to be "cited as an example of
orthodoxy and religious zeal" and influenced the Forlì art school
itself, placing it in substantial advance even on the evolution of
the Roman school.
In 1630, the city escaped the plague, which also devastated the
rest of Italy and Romagna. The population attributed the merit to a
miraculous intervention of the Madonna del Fuoco, in whose honor a
celebratory column was erected in the Campo dell'Abate (today Piazza
Saffi).
From a general point of view, despite various
vicissitudes, such as the looting carried out by the Austrians in
1708, the political situation remained substantially unchanged until
the unification of Italy, except for a short period of political
independence from the Papal State around 1797, when Forlì became the
capital of the Rubicon department in the new administrative division
dictated by Napoleon's troops to the follower of the Kingdom of
Italy. Among the laws imposed by the new Napoleonic civil code there
was the possibility of divorce and a citizen of Forlì requested it
(first cause of divorce more than 150 years from the current law).
Furthermore, the Napoleonic officials took care of investigating
the habits and customs of the subjugated populations, producing a
considerable amount of data on the popular traditions of this part
of Romagna. A Forlì managed to recover part of those investigations
(actually mostly coming from Sarsina, but also in use in Forlì) and
published a text that is one of the first works on Romagna
traditions, then followed by the work of Pergoli verso the end of
the nineteenth century, which also took care of the collection of
songs in Forlì and in San Martino in strada (fraction of Forlì).
In the first half of the 19th century, the papal legation of
Forlì, entrusted to a Legate Cardinal, also included the cities of
Cesena and Rimini.
In January 1832 the city was sacked and 21
of its citizens killed during the massacres of Cesena and Forlì by
the papal troops during the final repression of the Romagna
uprisings.
It should be remembered, during the Roman Republic
of 1849, the initiative of the patriotic banquets, which were held,
in support of it, in Forlì, and it was the only case in all of
Italy: it was patriotic public banquets, which saw a massive
participation of the paying public.
From a cultural point of
view, the Renaissance saw the birth and flourishing, with Melozzo
and Marco Palmezzano, of the Forlì school of art, then carried on by
authors such as Francesco Menzocchi and Livio Agresti in the
sixteenth century, and by their followers of the following
centuries. There are also important productions of majolica and
ceramics: to remember at least the name of Leucadio Solombrini, who
King Francis I of France wanted to invite to open a shop at his
court in Amboise.
The illustrious medical tradition of Forlì
also continues, with characters such as Girolamo Mercuriali and
Giovanni Battista Morgagni.
Units of measure preceding the
decimal system.
Before the introduction of the metric system
(1861), other units of measurement were being adopted. In Forlì, the
main ones were:
for the length: the pole (pëdga), divided
into 10 feet, equivalent to 4.881598 m; the canvas arm (braz), 0.74
m; the cloth arm, 0.62 m; the foot (pè), divided into 10 ounces,
approximately equivalent to 0.49 m;
for the surface: the turning
(tarnadura), divided into 100 square poles, equivalent to 2383 m²;
the square pole, divided into 100 square feet, equivalent to 23.83
m²;
for volume: cubic foot, divided into 1 000 cubic ounces,
equivalent to 0.116 cubic meters;
for the capacity of containers
for grains and dry matter: the bag (sac da dó stëra), divided into
two bushels, equivalent to 144.32 l; the bushel (stër), divided into
two 2 mezzini, equivalent to 72.16 l; the mezzino, divided into two
quarters, or quatrains, equivalent to 36.08 l; the fourth, or
quartino, (cvartaröla), divided into 4 provende, equivalent to 18.04
l; the provenda, equivalent to 4.51 l;
for weight: the pound
(livra), divided into 12 ounces, equivalent to 0.329 kg; the ounce
(ônza), divided into 8 octaves, equivalent to 0.024 kg.
Contemporary age
In the second half of the nineteenth century
Forlì became the "zitadòn" (town) of Romagna: a large center
compared to the other neighboring urban realities, whose prosperity
derives from agriculture - the typical sharecropping contract is
widespread - and from the salt trade through the direct route to
Cervia and its salt pans, as well as from its location on the
strategic Via Emilia, halfway between Bologna and Rimini. The city,
however, also experienced the first phenomena of industrialization:
the billiards factory; the brewery of Gaetano Pasqui; the furnaces
of the first half of the 19th century; Becchi, for the construction
of terracotta stoves which later became famous; the Bonavita
Anonymous Company for the production of felt; the important Officine
Forlanini. From a cultural point of view, Forlì is an active city,
with the presence of some newspapers.
There was no shortage of prominent personalities during the
Risorgimento: Aurelio Saffi, a Mazzinian republican, and Piero
Maroncelli, a friend of Silvio Pellico and imprisoned like him for
his ideal of a united Italy free from foreign or religious
domination.
As proof of the modernization underway, on May
21, 1915 (just before Italy entered the First World War), in the
place where the university now stands, the new city hospital, named
after Giovanni Battista Morgagni, officially came into operation.
The city mourns its martyrs of the Great War and in the first
post-war period it shows a remarkable intellectual vivacity, for
example with the inauguration of the Forlivese Artistic Cenacle
(1920). But it is with the rise of Fascism and the Second World War
that Forlì returns to make a lot of talk about itself. At 15 km from
the city, in Predappio, Benito Mussolini was born: when he first
became prime minister, then duce, Forlì inevitably enjoyed a certain
reputation for returning, beginning to be presented in official
propaganda as "the city of the Duce". This had negative consequences
in the postwar years, when it was possible to witness, by way of
retaliation, what a historian has defined an implicit conventio ad
tacendum: whenever it was not really inevitable to mention it, Forlì
did not even have to be mentioned. To express the particular state
of mind present in Forlì in the decades following the war, Giorgio
Bocca talks about the Duce complex.
During the regime,
however, Forlì developed beyond its traditional territorial and
economic context: the architects of the regime indulged in designing
new buildings corresponding to the taste of the moment, such as the
new railway station, the new Palazzo delle Poste and that of the
State Offices (whose architecture resembles a "B", like Benito) in
the central piazza Saffi, viale Benito Mussolini (now Viale della
Libertà), along which the State Industrial Technical Institute was
built, with the plant in the shape of an enormous "M "(like
Mussolini). All this building fervor qualifies Forlì, according to
Ulisse Tramonti (of the University of Florence), as a "national
showcase of rationalist architecture".
Local industries then
grew (Forlanini, Mangelli); in 1936 the "Luigi Ridolfi" airport was
inaugurated, at the time the largest military airport in Italy,
which, after the war, was for a long time a pole of commercial
traffic with the countries of communist Europe.
The city paid
its bill of human lives to the war, also bearing the loss of
priceless artistic treasures, such as the church of San Biagio or
the municipal theater; the civic tower was also bombed, only to be
rebuilt later. The bell tower of the Basilica of San Mercuriale was
instead spared by the retreating Germans, the voices of the people
indicate through the intercession and plea of the parish priest
Don Giuseppe Prati, known amiably as Don Pippo. Certain is the work
of the then bishop of the city, Monsignor Giuseppe Rolla, who
certainly paid a very substantial price in terms of provisions and
livestock for the retreating German army. Recently some "nostalgic"
voices would like to point out in the direct intervention of Benito
Mussolini the cause of the rescue of the bell tower. This
possibility is actually remote. At the beginning of the 20th
century, Mussolini himself, a fervent anticlerical, set the door of
the same church on fire, also suffering a condemnation reported in
the chronicles of the time.
Among the tragic moments of the
war, the massacre of Forlì should also be mentioned, in which 42
people were killed in September 1944 at the city airport. Other
massacres were committed in the Forlì area: the massacre of San Tomè
and massacre of Branzolino.
The British and Indian allied
troops entered the city, coming from Cesena, with the support of the
partisan brigades. Precisely as a symbolic city, the British wanted
to reserve for themselves the honor of entering Forlì, preceding
both the partisans themselves and the Poles of Władysław Anders, who
had already taken Predappio. The well-kept Indian Cemetery is still
present and can be visited almost in front of the Monumental
Cemetery, in memory of those who lost their lives on this occasion.
One month after its liberation, on 10 December 1944, Forlì was
shocked by a bombing of the German air force, which experienced for
the first time the effect on an inhabited center of a new type of
bomb, the Grossladungsbombe SB 1000, with development horizontal
explosive instead of "funnel" (and with the relative lack of the
crater). In addition to numerous deaths, this bombing was
responsible for the loss of the Church of San Biagio.
The
first mayor of the liberated Forlì was Franco Agosto, to whom the
Urban Park is dedicated today, a green lung on the bend that the
Montone river forms near Porta Ravaldino.
After the war the
city stabilized in its traditional activities linked to the
agricultural and artisan sector, developing a dynamic reality of
small artisan businesses or cooperatives.
Forlì was also the
scene of a murder by the Red Brigades. On April 16, 1988 (ten years
after the assassination of Aldo Moro, and just a few days after the
birth of the new government headed by De Mita, which Ruffilli had
helped to create), they assassinated Senator Roberto Ruffilli in his
house in Corso Diaz, in the Ravaldino district.
On April 5,
2009, around 10.20 pm, an earthquake of magnitude 4.7 was felt
between the cities of Forlì and Faenza, which anticipated the
terrible earthquake of April 6, 2009 in L'Aquila.
Forlì is located in the Po valley, more precisely in Romagna, 5 km away from the first hills of the Tuscan-Romagna Preappennino and about 26 km from the Adriatic coast. The outskirts are bathed by the Montone river which, near the Vecchiazzano district, receives the waters of the Rabbi river, and then laps the urban walls at Porta Schiavonia, and by the Ronco river which crosses the homonymous suburb of the city.
In the
United Rivers basin the rocks tend to become more and more recent as
they proceed from upstream to downstream. The oldest ones of local
origin are, in fact, represented by the boulder, a powerful
succession of sandstone banks with marly intercalations, formed
between 37 and 18 million years ago, outcropping in the Apennine
ridge. In the mountains and hills, the marly-sandstone formation
dominates, which settled between 15 and 7 million years ago. During
the accumulation of this 5300 m thick formation, the depth of the
seabed was kept practically constant by progressive subsidence.
Towards the end of the Middle Miocene, subsidence ceased, the
arm of the sea in question tends to fill up, the wrinkling of
sedimented rocks begins below the sea depths and the first
allochthonous blankets arrive in the Romagna areas. They take the
name of Ligurian, because their main nucleus was formed in the
Ligurian domain during the Cretaceous. These rocks, due to
successive movements, are reduced to a chaotic state and have also
dragged with them more recent formations deposited on them during
the various stasis of the movement. In the Municipality of Forlì,
only a modest allochthonous strip currently crops out on the right
bank of the Ronco river.
In the upper Miocene, about 5
million years ago, the orogeny and the concomitant lowering of the
sea level, consequent to the desiccation of the Mediterranean
following the closure of the Strait of Gibraltar, led to a vast
emergence of land. The mountainous and hilly areas were crossed by
watercourses, which gave rise to the delta deposits that are located
upstream of the Municipality of Forlì on the border with that of
Predappio. Lakes and lagoons occupied the most depressed parts of
the territory and, especially the latter, were subjected to strong
and prolonged evaporation, which gave rise to the chalky-sulphurous
formation rocks, still typical of hilly areas today. The emerged
lands were green with a rich flora, and were populated by horses,
carnivores, insectivores, monkeys, birds and reptiles, animals of
which fossil remains have been found.
At the beginning of the
Pliocene, the communications between the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic Ocean, a sea rich in plant life, were definitively
re-established, the sea returned to advance up to the current low
hill areas and abandoned clayey and sandy sediments depending on the
place and depth. . In this period the spungone, a typical local
stone, was also deposited, consisting of a limestone of the lower
middle Pliocene, produced by an underwater reef rich in life.
During the upper Pliocene and much of the lower Pleistocene,
with which the Quaternary era begins about 1.8 million years ago,
the sedimentation of marine clays continues in the low hills whose
beginning of the new era is indicated by the appearance of fossils,
testifying to the cooling of the Mediterranean. Subsequently, the
depth of the sea gradually decreased until it gave rise to the
yellow sand beach in the pre-hill area, between 1.45 and 1.1 million
years ago, interrupted here and there by the deltas of the Apennine
rivers. On the lands that emerged then luxuriant arboreal vegetation
grew and the sea was rich in molluscs and other organisms. At the
end of the lower Pleistocene, Homo erectus lived along this coast,
which left numerous finds in the area of Monte Poggiolo.
At
the end of the Middle Pleistocene, on an erosion surface connecting
the plain to the ancient hilly surface, a level of Aeolian silts,
defined loess, was formed, attributable to the Rissian glaciation,
which ended about 150,000 years ago. The environment was then dry
and rather cold, and the ground covered with herbaceous plants and
rare trees, large herbivores (elephants, rhinos, bison) which were
prey to small groups of nomadic hunters.
During the last part of the Quaternary era, erosive phenomena completed the current modeling of the hilly and mountain relief, in which pyramidal shapes dominate in the outcrops of the marly-arenaceous formation and gentle undulations of the clayey hill, often interrupted by steep fans of valleys of the badlands. At the same time, powerful alluvial sheets were formed in the plain following the deposit of erosive sediments from the reliefs and transported by rivers to the depressed parts of the territory. Below Forlì, their thickness is more than 200 m. Even in the hilly mountain slopes the watercourses have left traces of their sedimentation activity.
Forlì has a warm temperate
climate, permanently humid, with very hot summers (Köppen-Geiger Cfa
classification).
The climate is influenced by being close to
the coast of the Adriatic Sea, at the southern edge of the Po Valley
and close to the Apennine ridge, which, together with the mountain
spurs between the valleys, oriented from south-west to north-east,
greatly influences the wind pattern on the ground.
The
coldest month, January, has an average temperature of 3.1 ° C, while
the hottest month, July, has an average temperature of 24.7 ° C. The
highest temperature recorded in Forlì was 43.0 ° C in August 2017
while the lowest is −19.0 ° C recorded in January 1985. The annual
excursion, given by the difference between the average temperature
of the hottest month is that of the coldest month, it oscillates
between 18 and 23 ° C.
The average annual rainfall of Forlì
is approximately 745 mm of rain, and the number of rainy days is on
average 75. The rains are distributed fairly regularly throughout
the year, with maximum values in November (79 mm) and lows in
January (38 mm), February and July (40 mm).
The phenomenon of
fog occurs regularly every year, especially in the winter months, or
at the end of autumn, manifesting itself at different levels of
intensity and frequency with prevailing accentuation of the lowland
areas in the morphological depressions and thinning out further
south starting from the Apennine offshoots.
In Forlì the
north-west, east and south-west winds predominate. In spring, summer
and autumn winds from the east prevail, in winter those from the
north-west.