Castrocaro Terme e Terra del Sole

Castrocaro Terme e Terra del Sole sits on the Montone river, ten kilometers southwest of Forlì in the Apennine foothills. The commune is the union of two distinct towns. Castrocaro, on the hill, holds one of the oldest castles in Italy, documented from the late ninth century, expanded into a fortress that controlled the Montone valley.

Terra del Sole on the plain below is the rarer thing: a Renaissance fortress town founded on 8 December 1564 by Cosimo I de' Medici to display the power of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in Romagna, built on a perfectly symmetrical pentagonal plan with two squares, four gates, and walls still intact. The Medici held the town until 1923, when the provincial border moved. The Terme di Castrocaro draw on iodine and bromine waters discovered in 1830 by Professor Antonio Targioni Tozzetti, with the thermal complex active since. From 1957 the town hosted the Concorso di Castrocaro, the singing contest that launched most of Italian post-war pop, still running each summer.