A region lined up by a road

In 187 BC the Romans drew a straight road from Rimini to Piacenza and set the cities along it at regular intervals. Two thousand two hundred years later that road is still the spine of the region: Rimini, Cesena, Forli, Faenza, Imola, Bologna, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Fidenza and Piacenza are all there, in a row, one every twenty or thirty kilometres. Understand that and you understand how you move around Emilia Romagna.

Three bands and a sea

North of the Via Emilia lies the plain, flat all the way to the Po, with its reclaimed land, its poplars and its low villages. To the south the hills begin immediately and then the Apennines, which half an hour by car will take you to a thousand metres. To the east, where the plain ends, is the coast: a hundred and thirty kilometres of sand almost without a break, from the Comacchio lidos to Cattolica.

For anyone travelling by tent or motorhome the consequence is simple: the coast is where the campsites are, the Via Emilia is where the cities are, and the Apennines are where you go when August on the riviera gets too hot. The three are close together: Rimini to Bologna is a hundred and twenty kilometres, Bologna to the ridge only seventy.

The coast is not all the same

The character changes from north to south. The Ferrara and Ravenna lidos are wide, with pine woods behind them and the biggest campsites; from Cervia to Cesenatico the sand narrows and the towns come closer together; from Rimini to Cattolica it is a single city twenty kilometres long, with a rebuilt seafront and life that never stops. The sea bed shelves gently everywhere, which is why this coast is full of families with small children.

The sea to sleep by, the Via Emilia to eat on, the Apennines for the hot hours.

The rule of thumb among those who holiday here

How to plan it

The base is almost always chosen on the coast, and the day trips start from there. Bologna, Ravenna, Ferrara, Rimini and San Marino are all within an hour and a half of a riviera campsite, and trains along the Via Emilia are frequent: Rimini to Bologna takes a good hour on a local service and spares you the parking. Those after cooler air do the opposite: they base themselves in the Apennines and come down to the sea now and then.

The other thing to know is the season. In July and August you book months ahead on the riviera and the sites are full; in June and September the same places are half empty and cost less, with the sea already warm. Out of season many close: between October and Easter it is worth phoning first.