The Good Life in Emilia-Romagna: Forlì

Buongiorno a tutti!

I hope you’re all well and have been waiting with baited breath for the fourth part in the Settimana del Buon Vivere Pentalogy! We went far and wide during our week away in the search to discover why the region of Emilia-Romagna has come to be known as the region of “good-living”. We went on bike rides, boat trips, art tours and explored Forli, Ravenna and Cesena so all in all, it was a packed schedule! In this post I’ll write about some of the hidden gems we discovered in Forlì.

Waterworks of Forli

Forli is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. It comes from the Latin name for the town “Forum Livii”. I suspect in the UK, not many of you will have heard of Forlì but it played an important role in Italy’s history and has been the home to some of their more famous and forward-thinking people. In fact, the squares and roads are dedicated to one of the citizens they’re most proud of, Aurelio Saffi, a Politian active during the unification of Italy in the 19^th century. More on him later…

The theme of the Settimana del Buon Vivere this year was ‘Water’ so with that in mind we had an ‘urban trek’ organised in partnership with the Municipality of Forlì to discover ‘Forlì, the city of water`. Now to be honest, when you walk around Forlì the first thing you think is not “wow, look at all this water” so I was intrigued. However, it really is a city of water; it’s just that you can hardly see any of it!

We started off at the Rocca di Ravaldino (also known as Rocca di Caterina Sforza) where our excellent tour guide, Gabriele Zelli, gave us an insight into how important water was for Forlì in the past.

Rocca means ‘stronghold’. Here’s the Rocca…

Gabriele told us about the past lives of the castle which was a defensive home of Caterina Sforza (the Countess of Forlì – have a look at her Wiki page, she was quite a character!) and its subsequent takeover by Ravaldino and then eventually its use as a prison. A moat ran around the castle which is now filled in and canals ran very close to it, and in fact still do, underneath roads and houses.

The canals were essential for farming and industry. A number of mills and tanning factories were set up along the canals.  Forlì also has a long history of making sugar from a type of beetroot (sugar beet) which needs a lot of water which was why the canals were so important to the city. Along the canals there were also public wash-houses (lavatoio) where people washed their clothes. However it wasn’t always an easy relationship Forlì had with water; poor quality drinking water led to thousands falling ill each year from typhoid and dysentery etc.

Today, after further development of the city the canals are almost totally covered, apart from this part in the main city. They are still in use though by the farming industry.

Forlì has a diverse range of architecture, demonstrated perfectly in Piazza Saffi, the main piazza. Here you can see buildings from both the renaissance period, the fascist period and the 1960’s (what were those architects thinking?!)

A romantic scene snapped under the arches of the Post Office, in Piazza Saffi, constructed during the Fascist era!

This is Piazza Saffi with its eclectic architecture…

And these were some snaps taken during our tour. I loved this beautiful image painted on the side of a building near the San Giacomo church.

The Risorgimento at Villa Saffi

Villa Saffi is on the outskirts of the main town of Forlì and was the home of Aurelio Saffi, the Italian Politician that the Forlivese (residents of Forlì) are very proud of. He was an active protagonist in Forlì’s ‘Risorgimento’ (the fight for the liberation and unification of Italy between 1750–1870) and was a good friend of Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini led the movement. The Risorgimento was unsuccessful and they were exiled to the UK where Aurelio met his wife, Giorgina Craufurd (the least sounding English name ever – I assume she got fed up of Italian’s trying to pronounce Georgina Crawford and changed it!)  Years later they moved back to Forlì and lived there until their deaths. It is possible to take a tour around their house and see where secret political meetings were conducted, the ice-house, a lovely wall mural in the “table tennis room” and some of the niftiest furniture I’ve ever seen. In fact, there’s barely an item of furniture in the house it seems that doesn’t have some secret compartment, trick to using it or can turn into something else entirely.

Look at these signatures below. My photos are a bit blurred unfortunately but aren’t they beautiful?! There is a remembrance book full of them for those that came to the funeral of Giorgina. It’s made me realise just how awful my signature and general handwriting is. Even the recipe below, an original from the kitchen, looks elegant!

Restoring books at the Laboratorio del Restauro Libri

We also went to the Laboratorio del restauro libri in Forli to see how books are restored. This isn’t a tour open to the general public but for those interested in how the process works, tours can be arranged (see contacts in the link above). This was definitely one of the most fascinating parts of our week. I am just absolutely gobsmacked by the work they do here. If you saw the state of the books they restore, it’s amazing the team aren’t rocking back and forth in the corner of the room having gone completely mad! I don’t know of any other job where you would need as much patience.

They carefully number the pages which is a challenge in itself because often the pages are all stuck together. Then they wash each page in a large sink and carefully dab away any mould in the corner and then they reassemble it using traditional bookbinding techniques. When parts of the pages become separated and they don’t know where they’re from, they collect the pieces together and it becomes like a sort of mammoth jigsaw puzzle to work out which one of the hundreds of pages the missing part came from!

The amount of work and dedication involved is enough to make your eyes water. The restoration work for one book can take weeks, if not months. Books come in from private collectors or libraries around Italy and the team provide a quote for the clean-up operation. (Forlì is lucky that I’m not managing this team – I like books and I think it’s great to preserve our history but my patience is such that I would have written back to the library or private collector to suggest they just preserve it in its current state as a hunk of mould!) So, in summary, I’m full of admiration for this team and if you fancy doing something a bit ‘off the beaten track’, an organised tour here is absolutely fascinating.

Check out the Biblioteca Saffi

Continuing with the book theme, Biblioteca Saffi is also definitely worth a visit (visits should be organised in advance – contact details in the link). Biblioteca means library (confusingly “Libreria” means bookshop!) and this one is located a short walk from Piazza Saffi. It houses the most amazing collection of books, paintings and other objects donated by Carlo Piancastelli, a collector with a passion for……..well, everything! The collection includes old letters, books, score music, maps, portraits and sculptures and spreads across a number of rooms. To me a “collector” implies someone that collects for a hobby but I think it was akin to a full-time job for Carlo. It’s certainly an impressive legacy to leave.

If you want to read more about Forli, have a look at my previous blog post Touring Forlì and tune in for the next blog post about other things you can do in the area!

A presto,

x