Forlì is a comune (municipality) and city in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. It is the central city of Romagna.The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre. The city hosts some of Italy’s culturally and artistically significant landmarks; it is also notable as the birthplace of painters Melozzo da Forlì and Marco Palmezzano, humanist historian Flavio Biondo, physicians Geronimo Mercuriali and Giovanni Battista Morgagni. The University Campus of Forlì (part of the University of Bologna) is specialized in Economics, Engineering, Political Sciences as well as the Advanced school of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators (SSLMIT).
The surroundings of Forlì have been inhabited since the Paleolithic: a site, Ca’ Belvedere of Monte Poggiolo, has revealed thousands of chipped flints in strata dated 800,000 years before the present era, which indicates a flint-knapping industry producing sharp-edged tools in a pre-Acheulean phase of the Paleolithic. Forlì was founded after the Roman conquest of the remaining Gallic villages; about the time the Via Aemilia was built. With no clear evidence, the exact date this occurred is still under debate, though some historians believe that the first settlement of the ancient Roman Forum was built in approximately 188 BC by consul Gaius Livius Salinator (the same that fought Hasdrubal Barca and vanquished him at the banks of the Metaurus River in 207 BC), who gave it the Latin name Forum Livii, meaning “the place of the gens Livia”. Others argue the town may have been founded later, during the time of Julius Caesar. In 88 BC, the city was destroyed during the civil wars of Gaius Marius and Sulla, but later rebuilt by the praetor Livius Clodiu.