Cesenatico (Ziznàtic in Romagna) is an Italian town of 25 971 inhabitants in the province of Forlì-Cesena in Emilia-Romagna. A well-known seaside resort and tourist destination, it is located in the center of the Romagna Riviera, between Rimini and Ravenna.
The territory around Cesenatico must have
appeared about 10,000 years ago as an extensive lagoon where
brackish areas alternated with marshy areas of fresh water.
Consistent traces of a first settlement concern the period starting
from the 5th century BC: bricks, tombs and furnishings confirm the
human presence in the current Borella locality. The maritime cities
of Adria, Ancona, Spina and Ravenna saw the presence of: merchants
from Magna Graecia (who sold pottery); Umbrians (locally settled in
Sarsina), who went down to the valley to trade their products;
Etruscans, founders of the Spina emporium and the cities of
Verucchio and Rimini; Celts, skilled in cultivation and looking for
new lands.
Starting from the third century BC (battle of
Sentino) increased the influence of Rome on the Cispadan
territories. The Romans in fact re-founded Rimini and made it a
bridgehead for their future campaigns to conquer the north. Then,
along a path that can be identified with the future Via Popilia,
several rustic villas, production settlements with an
artisanal-rural character, which included a residential part (the
owner's residence) and a productive part (factories for the
transformation and processing of wheat, milk, cheese, leather ..).
The Romans settled permanently in the area at the end of the
century after having definitively defeated the Celtic and Etruscan
populations. The area was then subjected to a centuriation plan.
Hills were leveled, vast areas cleared, forests felled and roads
built. The area between Cesenatico and Cesena took on the
appearance, which it still retains, of arable land.
The
coastal stretch between Ravenna and Rimini, lagoon, was subjected to
reclamation works, which ended in 132 BC. the two cities were
connected by the Via Popilia. The first Roman remains found in the
area on which Cesenatico later rose date back to this period (II-I
century BC). Excavations conducted between the 60s and 70s of the
20th century and subsequently made it possible to identify sites
datable to the period between the 2nd century BC. up to the 4th
century AD, in particular rustic villas. Among these, the site of Ca
'Bufalini is particularly interesting, where traces of various
buildings have been found at the edge of a large road. The
hypothesis is considered - still to be verified on an archaeological
basis - that the settlement can be identified with the town Ad Novas
that appears in the Tabula Peutingeriana. Ad Novas seems to be a
statio, or rather a place to rest and change horses. The site is
also mentioned by some sources from the 8th century as a place
"where a city now destroyed once stood". In the following centuries
the territory was crossed by wars between Romans and barbarian
peoples.
In the early Middle Ages the
population of the territory where Cesenatico was born, as well as
that of the rest of the peninsula, returned to practicing
subsistence agriculture. The Bishop of Ravenna, Martino, could write
about 818 that he stopped "where once there was a city now
destroyed": Ad Novas.
The Adriatic coast was spared from the
Lombard invasion: the lands around the future Cesenatico remained
administered by the Byzantine Exarchate. Ravenna was the capital of
the exarchate: even after the end of the Byzantine dominion (751) it
continued to exert its influence on the surrounding territory.
With the communal age Cesena, in the phase of territorial
expansion, tried to equip itself with a port and aimed to take
possession of Cervia. But Ravenna opposed: the city of salt was in
fact its domain. The people of Cesena then turned further south, in
an area bordering the possessions of Rimini. In 1302 the people of
Cesena began construction work on a fortress by the sea. Rimini
tried to stop him: Federico da Montefeltro attacked Cesena itself,
sacking the rural areas. Once they reached the sea, the Rimini
inhabitants besieged and destroyed the fortress. Projects were
postponed. In 1314 the works at the port of Cesena were resumed and
under the government of Ostansio Capitano and Guido Novello Da
Polenta they were completed on 10 August of the same year.
Thus was born the port of Cesena, which became "Cesenatico". As the
birth was suffered, development was also troubled. The infighting
between the noble families intolerant of the papacy and the Church,
which did everything to keep power, brought reprisals and soldiers
to Romagna who raged against the port of Cesena to "punish" the
rebellious city. The port and the fortress were destroyed for the
first time in 1328; the fortress was rebuilt in the same year but
the port was reopened only six years later, when Francesco II
Ordelaffi reigned in Cesena.
In 1356 the Pope sent Cardinal Albornoz to northern Italy with
the primary task of bringing back (not only formally) the lands of
Romagna under the direct dominion of the Church: Albornoz together
with Gianciotto Malatesta conquered the port of Cesena by destroying
the palisades again and making it unusable; only in 1382 the port
regained its primary function but in 1415 it capitulated again under
the blows inflicted by Braccio da Montone. To understand how
strategic the port of Cesenatico was, it must be borne in mind that
the nearby city of Cervia put great pressure on the Venetians to
obtain the exclusivity of the salt trade, worried precisely by the
cumbersome presence of the rival city. Furthermore, there is also
news of the presence of warehouses used for the storage of goods
owned by Tuscan traders, a sign that the port was known even at
considerable distances.
The port experienced a period of
relative prosperity during the reign of the Malatesta, but the
problems were not long in coming: in addition to the destruction in
1415, the inhabitants had to face the progressive silting up which,
over time, prevented ships from entering the port. The latter
problem was resolved with the construction of two piers, which
limited the silting up of the entrance channel to the port.
During the brief dominion of Cesare Borgia over
Romagna, the presence of Leonardo da Vinci in Cesenatico was
recorded. After having worked on the improvement of the military
infrastructures in Rimini, Imola, Faenza and Cesena, the Tuscan
genius carried out an inspection in the port of Cesenatico, of which
he drew a sketch still preserved and - one can suppose - gave advice
on possible improvements. For several years it was the desire of the
people of Cesena to connect their city with the sea through a
navigable canal, but the work was impossible given the 44 meters of
altitude difference.
In the following years a new danger
appeared on the Romagna town, coming from the sea: the pirates. The
first to attack the city were marauders of Venetian origin who,
having failed the siege of Rimini as it was well equipped with
cannons and ammunition, found an easy victory in Cesenatico. The
town was plundered of all its assets. Then it was the turn of the
Uskoks, peoples of Slavic origin who raided the coasts of Romagna
and Marche, and finally the Muslims, who in these areas were buying
up Christian slaves to be deported to North Africa. For these events
at the end of the sixteenth century, numerous watchtowers were
built.
Until the second half of the eighteenth century a salt
works were active in Cesenatico. Due to the proximity of Cervia,
whose economy was strongly based on salt, the city had to specialize
in another direction. Closed the salt, Cesenatico began to become a
town with a commercial vocation; the port assumed the mercantile and
fishing function that still distinguishes it today. The new wave of
wealth pushed the Cesenatic population to claim full autonomy from
the city of Cesena. These first signs were blocked by the Church
which tried to maintain the established order also with a view to
saving. The arrival of the Napoleonic troops made the turning point
possible: in 1798 Cesenatico separated from Cesena, becoming an
autonomous municipality; with the arrival of the Austrians in 1799
the old order was restored, but in July 1800 the French returned and
the coastal town became autonomous again.
On 21 December 1827
Leo XII granted Cesenatico the definitive autonomy from Cesena.
Subsequently, numerous disputes over borders arose with the
inhabitants of Cesena: the long-standing quarrel ended only on June
3, 1842. Between the twenties and thirties of the nineteenth
century, numerous families of fishermen from Chioggia settled,
invited here by the authorities and the local merchant classes who
they wanted to transform the town into one of the main fishing ports
of the upper Adriatic. In the night between 1 and 2 August 1849
Giuseppe Garibaldi, in retreat after the fall of the Roman Republic,
entered the town with his wife Anita and some followers with the
intent of requisitioning some bragozzi and reaching Venice, where
Daniele Manin still resisted. to the Austrians. After taking
possession of Cesenatico, the Garibaldians left the town aboard some
boats. The flotilla was however intercepted along the southern
coasts of the Po Delta by a squad of the Austrian imperial navy;
Thus Garibaldi was forced to disembark at the Port of Magnavacca to
escape capture.
With the plebiscite of March 1860 Cesenatico
was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, which the following year
became the Kingdom of Italy.
After the unification of Italy the socio-economic situation of
the city was still characterized by high poverty and endemic
unhealthiness, with an infant mortality rate, between 1893 and 1905,
close to 50%. In 1875 the town was hit by two violent earthquakes
that caused numerous damages and the partial collapse of the
sixteenth-century clock tower, then definitively demolished because
it was unsafe. Despite the scarcity of economic resources, in the
decades following the unity numerous public works were built such as
the municipal theater (1865), the reconstruction of Piazza
Garibaldi, the fish market, the new clock tower and the reclamation
of the marshy lands that surrounded the country. In July 1886 the
town was finally reached by the railway coming from Ravenna.
The arrival of the train allowed the development of a new industry
which, for some years, had also taken its first steps in Cesenatico,
the seaside tourism. In 1865 the first huts were built on the beach
but it was only in 1878 that the first bathing establishment was
inaugurated complete with restaurant, bar and dressing rooms (for
changing clothes). To facilitate access to the beach for tourists, a
first road was built in 1889 that ran along the quay of the port. In
1894 Viale Anita Garibaldi was opened; three years later the first
rescue service was established and in 1903 the area to the right of
the canal port was divided into lots for the construction of villas.
During the Second World War Cesenatico was subjected to bombings
that caused the destruction of the town hall, the aqueduct tower,
the lighthouse and the bridges over the canal port and the Mazzarini
vein, the partial destruction of the pier, the fish market and the
schools in the hamlets of Villalta, Sala, Cannucceto, Villamarina
and Bagnarola. Moreover, to make the port useless, all the fishing
boats and boats were mined and sunk by the Germans who, in the last
days of occupation, also blew up the tower of the ancient Malatesta
fortress, the last remnant of the city's foundation. On October 20,
1944, the city was liberated by the 2nd New Zealand Infantry
Division.
Restoration and reconstruction work began
immediately. In 1945 the fishermen's cooperative was founded and a
new impetus was given to tourism. Many of the villas were converted
into hotels, new colonies were set up (one of the first was the 12
Star Colony, aimed at children from the autonomous province of
Bolzano, without distinction of language), and the construction of
the famous skyscraper gave rise to a new era focused on mass
tourism.
Today Cesenatico has about 22,000 beds, with 3
million visitors per season. In 1966 the municipal library was
founded; in the same year the coastal city was among the first in
Europe to start twinning projects with other centers. In 1977 a
historical-archaeological recovery project was launched and in the
1980s the guidelines were introduced that launched Cesenatico in a
global and European perspective.
Parish church of San Giacomo
Apostolo. Dating back to 1324, the current structure was defined in
1763, based on a project by Pietro Bastoni. Inside, there are some
interesting works, among others by Guido Cagnacci.
Church of San
Giuseppe.
Church of San Pietro Pescatore.
Church of the
Capuchin friars, or Church of Saints Nicola di Mira and Francesco
d'Assisi. It dates back to 1611, while the convent is three years
later. Inside, there is a San Michele by the painter of the Forlì
school Gian Francesco Modigliani.
Cesenatico has a canal port, which also develops with some
ramifications (locally called veins). It was built in the 14th
century, shortly after the founding of the city, and was enlarged
and improved several times.
In Piazza Ciceruacchio a profile
of tiles of different colors highlights the plan of a watchtower,
destroyed during the Napoleonic Wars.
Along Corso Garibaldi
still stands the house that gave an overnight stay to Giuseppe and
Anita Garibaldi fleeing from Rome to Venice in early August 1849.
For centuries, the catch was kept in iceboxes or "conserve", the
ancestors of the refrigerator. In Cesenatico it is still possible to
observe the last three preserved preserves still existing from all
of Northern Italy. They essentially consisted of a masonry
structure, a shed, under which the ice cell is located, that is, a
largely underground room in the shape of a funnel. Filled with ice,
the preserves allowed them to maintain a temperature of -5 ° even in
summer. They were built around 1820 and remained active until the
turn of the century.
Close to the port, in the area of a small sighting fortress,
there is an archaeological itinerary that testifies to the use of
landfill material from the rural settlements of the hinterland in
the construction of the fortress itself.
If the canal port
represents the historic city, the skyscraper, built in the 1950s on
the seafront, in the new area of the city in front of the
pre-existing Grand Hotel, is undoubtedly the symbol of modern and
touristic Cesenatico.
The new part of the city, which
develops around Viale Carducci, parallel to the seafront, has been
devoted almost entirely to tourism. On the seafront you can still
admire the historic villas built in the early twentieth century (the
first of these Villino Beatrice located east of the port), and the
former Veronese colony.
In the city there is also the
Maritime Museum, which includes some boats that are moored at the
port-canal, the most important of all is the Trabaccolo for
transport, on which it is possible to get on. During the Christmas
period, a very suggestive nativity scene is set up on these boats:
the Marine Nativity Scene, designed by Guerrino Gardini, with
life-size figures.
Since spring 2006 the Spazio Pantani near
the train station has been open to the public. A museum that brings
back memorabilia, bicycles and objects that belonged to the Romagna
cycling champion Marco Pantani, who lived his childhood and
adolescence in Cesenatico.
Also in Cesenatico stands the
building erected in the Fascist era - the work of the Bolognese
architect Giuseppe Vaccaro - known as Colonia Agip. The building is
now considered in the ATRIUM European Project.
The following take place annually in Cesenatico:
the Nove Colli.
since 1971, one of the best known cycling granfondos, which in the last
edition had around 12,000 members;
National phase of the Mathematics
Olympiad. Previously assigned to Viareggio, since 1989 the race has
taken place in Cesenatico. The event takes place during the first or
second weekend of May;
Maritime nativity scene. since 1986 the
Maritime Nativity scene has been set up on the boats of the Maritime
Museum during the Christmas period. During the Christmas period, from
the first Sunday of December until the Epiphany, the boats of the
Floating Section of the Maritime Museum become the stage for the
Maritime Nativity Scene. The nativity scene was created in 1986 and is
the work of the artists Tinin Mantegazza, Maurizio Bertoni and Mino
Savadori, from an original idea by Guerrino Gardini. The first sculpted
statue was that of San Giacomo, patron saint of Cesenatico, to whom many
others have been added over the years. These are not just traditional
statues seen in nativity scenes, but glimpses inspired by the life of
the common people of a fishing village, who tell through them the life
of a city: fishermen, carpenters, puppeteers, fishmongers, women with
the piadine, children and musicians. Together with the Holy Family, and
the traditional shepherds, we can see who sails or mends the nets, who
drives the boats, who sells the fish; without neglecting singular
details such as the presence of a group of dolphins that look out of the
water with curiosity. The statues are life-size: the faces, hands, feet
and all exposed parts are sculpted in pine wood, the draped clothes are
made of canvas stiffened by hot wax brushed on wooden structures made
voluminous by the modeled metal mesh in the desired form. The result is
highly effective, made even more evocative by the lights of the boats
reflecting on the water of the canal. Every year the Nativity scene is
enriched with a new statue and a new character. From the 7 figures with
which they debuted in 1986, today the sculptural heritage consists of
around fifty statues. Thus, the project of the artists Bertoni and
Savadori to equip each of the boats with a helmsman and a bowman over
the years is coming true. The figures are designed as elements of a
representation, to be seen from the banks of the Leonardesco Canal Port
as if from an audience; illuminated, because in the Nativity scene it is
the lights that give life to the figures and punctuate the story. And it
is precisely as evening falls that the Nativity Scene of the Navy lights
up, as if a curtain were opening.
Blue like the Fish and the Fish is
Partying. Cesenatico hosts the gastronomic events dedicated to the "poor
fish" of the Adriatic "Azzurro come il Pesce", in the third week of
March and "Il Pesce fa Festa" which takes place during the All Saints'
Day holiday. On the occasion of these events the streets of the city
center and the historic Colonia Agip are filled with tasting points
where you can taste traditional seafood dishes prepared with fresh fish
International Easter Sailing Regatta. since 1976 in the stretch of sea
adjacent to Cesenatico, during the Easter period, this regatta reserved
for the different classes of catamarans has taken place. Crews from all
over Europe compete, half a mile from the coast, on two battlefields, in
the East and in the West
the Pink Night. since 2006 the entire
Romagna Riviera has celebrated the summer New Year in July: the Pink
Night. Cesenatico dresses in pink and comes alive with shows and music
dedicated to the general public
Several restaurants are on the pier of the canal port, in the eastern
area. Others are between the ancient center and the dock, in the western
area. Finally, restaurants are also found along the avenues of the hotel
areas.
Average prices
Osteria dei Golosi, via M. Moretti 57,
Cesenatico Ponente, ☎ +39 054780204. It is a restaurant on the corner of
the dock. It offers excellent fish dishes, purchased fresh from the
nearby market, around €15 each
Cesenatico is full of hotels, mostly between ** and ****.
Average prices
1 Hotel Residence Elisabetta, Via Pitagora 11 (Piazza
Volta), ☎ +39 0547 86146, fax: +39 0547 87270, info@hotelelisabetta.it.
Hotel Valverde & Residenza, Lungomare Carducci 278, ☎ +39 0547 86043,
fax: +39 0547 86043, hotelvalverde@riccihotels.it.
Hotel Sport &
Residenza, Via Pitagora 5, ☎ +39 0547 87102, fax: +39 0547 87102,
hotelsport@riccihotels.it.
Hotel Nettuno, Lungomare Carducci 338, ☎
+39 0547 86086, fax: +39 0547 87684, hotelnettuno@riccihotels.it.
2
Hotel Leonardo, viale zara 96 (a few steps from the sea), ☎ +39 393
9428157, ☎ 800 134 757, fax: +39 0547 83683, info@hotelleonardo.com.
Check-in: 12.30pm, check-out: 10.00am.
3 Leonardo's rooms, via
baldini 5 (on the canal port of Cesenatico), ☎ +39 0547 80097, ☎ 800 134
757, fax: +39 0547 83683, info@lestanzedileonardo.com. Check-in: 4pm,
check-out: 1pm.