Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta

Ferrara wears the ambitions of the Este dukes in its street plan. From 1492 the architect Biagio Rossetti extended the medieval town with the Addizione Erculea, applying Renaissance perspective to urban design so boldly that historians count Ferrara among Europe's first modern cities. Painters flocked to the Este court, and the surrounding Po Delta — a waterland of reclaimed fields and lagoons — belongs to the same UNESCO World Heritage inscription, first listed in 1995.