Guess where?

[Septentrionalis]

Thank you for the input! I tend to agree, but I have a problem of confidence because of the catchphrase game. My entry is almost spelled out by now yet no one seems to get it.

[lolIsuck]

The architecture and pier scream British and the big castle ruin narrows it down a good bit as well so that is definitely very doable even without the hint.

[Septentrionalis]

Thanks to you to, lol. I will weigh in your confirmations during future rounds when I "design" the difficulty level. Now I am excited to see what Flinn has in store for us.

[Flinn]

Yes, like if I come here prepared



Now, think of me and this shouldn't be hard

[Iskar]

A marble bench made by a Roman company, and I guess the letters on the pedestal read "Unitas Italiae" or something like that, given the imagery on the top. Since we should thing of you (which we always do, anyhow) it might be in Assisi, which is not far from Roma, and there is even a Piazza Unità d'Italia in Assisi. However, that piazza seems to be little more than a crossroads near a bus stop/car park, and I couldn't find anything like that marble bench nearby, so I am doubtful this leads into the right direction.

[Flinn]

Good train of thoughts, but wrong sentence; it's not Unitas Italiae, that is.. I could not find any picture of this monument showing a particular point in red which might have helped you a lot.

Anyways, it's not that far from Assisi (not even very close, though), still in the... center of Italy

[Iskar]

If it's not unitas, then it's umbilicus, which pinpoints this as the "navel of Italy" on the Piazza San Rufo in Rieti, of which Pliny the Elder says that Varro says it is the centre of Italy.

[Flinn]

you got it right, this time

the hint about "center of Italy" gave it away I suppose.

Rieti it's "my city", a lovely and quite place, full of history and nature, older than Rome (it's the Reate of old, Vespesiano was from here), but so dramatically under developed..

over to you

[Iskar]

I actually searched for centre of Italy, but the search did not yield anything of use. Luckily the notion of "umbilical points" is something I know from geometry, so umbilicus was the next best guess for a word starting with U not being unitas and have something to do with centre. Umbilicus Italiae leads you directly to the Italian Wikipedia on Piazza San Rufo then.

[Septentrionalis]

Rieti it's "my city", a lovely and quite place, full of history and nature, older than Rome

I thought that you were trying to pull old Sept's leg here, because how could Rieti be older than Rome if it sits on an old lake bottom first drained by Romans? But it turned out that Sept had not done his homework. Rieti fell outside the original lake although the resulting plain is apparently named after the town.

Learning is perhaps the best thing about this competition in my opinion.

[Flinn]

I thought that you were trying to pull old Sept's leg here, because how could Rieti be older than Rome if it sits on an old lake bottom first drained by Romans? But it turned out that Sept had not done his homework. Rieti fell outside the original lake although the resulting plain is apparently named after the town.

Sure thing, one thing is the town of Rieti, the other one is the Piana Reatina. Recently they have found some important archaeological sites which date back to before 1000 BC, on what were the shores of that lake that was drained by the Romans approx 1000 years later (they did not really dry it, actually; what they did was to cut the stream of one important river in order to use it to feed one of the most important aqueducts of Rome, which is still working as of today).

Learning is perhaps the best thing about this competition in my opinion.

Fully agree

@ Iskar: Easter Island? I'm going with a wild guess

[Iskar]

Nope, not that side of the earth.

[lolIsuck]

British Isles? Was thinking maybe one of the Channel Islands but haven't been able to identify any fitting candidates there from a quick look.

[Iskar]

British Isles is correct, Channel Islands not.

[Septentrionalis]

That was really hard, but worth it. Got to see a lot of nice locations while researching it. Porth Mawr in Wales with the hill of Carn Llidi in the background. Whitesands Bay in English.

[Iskar]

Nice one, did you bruteforce bays on the British coastline or go by some clue?

It is supposedly the place from where St. Patrick set sail to Ireland and St. David was allegedly raised in one of the white dots halfway up the hill which is actually a pretty generous cottage these days. (Stayed there a couple of years ago.) The beach is pretty popular with surfers, too.

[Septentrionalis]

My first hunch was that it was in Cornwall and possibly in Wales and checked some places in Cornwall first. The clues I had were that it is much less rocky than many places on the western British coastline and that the vegetation is quite lush. That ruled out many places. I also considered very early the unusual hill that has vegetation until there is like a cap of bare rock. None of those helped me eventually and I finally ended up looking for travel blogs about distant beaches. That is when I found something useful and confirmed my suspicion by Google maps.

By the way, that place is very near to the starting point of the Landsker Line, the traditional divide between Welsh and English languages in Southern Wales.

Here is something unique and pretty to occupy your minds, although most likely for not too long.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Mont-St.Michel, Normandy, France ?

[Septentrionalis]

That is an excellent guess, Morty, but not right. You are very close to the solution in more than just one way.

[lolIsuck]

St. Michael's Mount then?