Area della Centuriazione

The plain around Cesena retains the outline of a land survey laid out by Roman settlers more than two thousand years ago. Vineyards, orchards and drainage ditches occupy a landscape organised on the ancient grid.

Why it matters

The regional heritage institute describes the Romagna plain as a well-preserved example of ancient centuriation. Cesena's surviving grid remains legible in the organisation of fields, roads and farms, linking the landscape's agricultural history to Roman land survey and drainage.

What to notice

A centuria, the basic square of the grid, measured twenty actus to a side, about 710 metres. The grid's axes are called cardines and decumani. Examples of their surviving alignments include the cardo associated with via Calabria at San Giorgio and the decumani associated with via Melona and via Montaletto; present-day rural roads preserve some of these ancient lines. The municipality's 2025 signage project interpreted sections of the decumanus near via Melona and via Chieri.

Context and history

Roman settlement reorganised this landscape from the late third century BC through land reclamation, farm settlement and property division. The regional heritage institute describes a centuriated system extending across the plain from Rimini through Cesena and Forlimpopoli towards the former course of the Ronco river; one decumanus can be traced for about nine kilometres west of the Savio. The area is also represented through local heritage and museum initiatives.