Rimini

 

Rimini (Rémin, Rémni or Rémne in Romagna, Rimino in archaic Italian) is an Italian town of 151 200 inhabitants, capital of the province of the same name in Emilia-Romagna.

Summer resort of international importance, it is located on the Romagna Riviera and extends for 15 km along the Upper Adriatic coast. It boasts a long tourism tradition: in 1843 the first bathing establishment in Italy was inaugurated here.

Colony founded by the Romans in 268 BC, for the whole period of their domination it was a communication node between the north and the south of the peninsula and on its soil the Roman emperors erected monuments of which important traces remain.

It was a fief of the Malatesta family, and the court of Sigismondo Malatesta was one of the liveliest of the time, hosting artists such as Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca, Roberto Valturio, Matteo de 'Pasti preserving important works of the Italian Renaissance.

 

Getting here

By plane
The local airport in Rimini (Aeroporto internazionale di Rimini e San Marino 'Federico Fellini', ​IATA: RMI), located about 7km south of the city center, is mainly served by charter companies, especially during the summer months.

Bologna International Airport (IATA: BLQ) is located approximately 120km northwest of Rimini.

By train
The train station is on the Bologna-Ancona railway line, where a line branches off to Ferrara. Other train stations are Rimini Viserba in the north of the city, Rimini Miramare in the south and Riminifiera at the exhibition center.

In the summer season, a DB-ÖBB EuroCity runs once a day in each direction without changing trains from Munich to Rimini (travel time around 7 1/2 hours).

By bus
Shuttle buses to/from the Italian regional airports of Venice, Bologna, Ravenna and Padua run from the station forecourt on the right. Departures from here are once a day, very early in the morning. Those who book in advance online receive a 20% discount.
The buses to Rome (2020: € 21) and San Marino also depart here.

FlixBus has its stop 2km from the center on Via Annibale Fada.

On the street
The A14 Autostrada Adriatica comes from Bologna, it goes via Bari to Taranto
The SS16 Strada Statale 16 Adriatica runs largely parallel to the A14, it comes from Padua and Ferrara and goes via Ancona to Brindisi.

 

Physical geography

Territory

Rimini is the largest municipality in Valmarecchia, it is located on the Adriatic Sea, at the south-eastern end of Emilia-Romagna, a short distance from Montefeltro and the Marche. The municipal territory extends for 135.71 km² and borders Bellaria-Igea Marina, San Mauro Pascoli and Santarcangelo di Romagna to the North West, Verucchio and Serravalle to the South West, Coriano to the South and Riccione to the South East. Rimini occupies a historically strategic position, at the extreme southern summit of the Po Valley, its province represents the southernmost point of northern Italy.

Although still on the plain, it is surrounded to the south-west by low and green hills, at the foot of which lies the city: Covignano (153 m), Vergiano (81 m), San Martino monte l'Abate (57 m) and San Lorenzo in Correggiano (60 m), planted with vineyards, olive groves and orchards and dominated by elegant villas. These slight undulations, consisting mainly of clayey and sandy formations, gradually connect the areas of the plain, originating from the river deposits of the Marecchia and the Ausa, the two main rivers of the Rimini area, to a series of higher hills that rise towards the Romagna Apennines. The Marecchia river flows within a very wide gravel bed and, after receiving the waters of the Ausa stream, flows into the Adriatic through a diverter between S. Giuliano Mare and Rivabella, while the original river course is used in its stretch to sea as a port channel. The Marecchia, normally poor in water, was subject to periodic floods capable of causing terrible floods at its mouth, where its bed narrowed into a narrowing preceded by numerous loops, and for this reason it was diverted to the north of the city. The Ausa torrent, which for centuries constituted the eastern limit of Rimini, was similarly diverted after World War II and its bed was filled and transformed into an urban park.

The coastal strip, made up of recent marine deposits, is bordered by a beach of fine sand, 15 km long and up to 200 m wide, interrupted only by the mouths of the waterways and sloping very slowly towards the sea. Along the coast runs a sandy strip, or "dead cliff", formed by phenomena of marine ingress which occurred around 4,000 BC. and exploited by the Romans for setting up the first city port. A section of the cordon is preserved north of Rimini, between Rivabella and Bellaria-Igea Marina, set back by about 1300 meters from the coast line.

The Rimini area, due to its geographical position and its climatic characteristics, is located on the border between the Mediterranean phytoclimatic area and the Central European area, and therefore represents a transitional environment from a naturalistic point of view. The flora of the Rimini area is traditionally included in the phytoclimatic area of ​​Lauretum, at the meeting point between the Mediterranean area of ​​the holm oak, which here reaches its northern end along the Adriatic coast, the warm sub-Mediterranean area of ​​deciduous oak woods and the temperate of English oak, hornbeam and ash.

 

Climate

Rimini has a warm temperate climate, permanently humid, with very hot summers (Köppen-Geiger Cfa classification). According to the Rivas-Martínez classification, it falls within the Mediterranean climate zone (Csa).

The climate is mild, with a reduced diurnal temperature range, thanks to the influence of the Adriatic Sea, with constant sea breezes between spring and autumn, and relatively little rain due to the partial protection of the Romagna Apennines during the passage of ocean disturbances. Rimini has the highest average autumn and winter temperatures and the highest annual average minimum temperatures in Emilia-Romagna.

The average annual temperature, for the period 1971-2000, is 13.6 ° C; the coldest month is January, with an average temperature of 4.0 ° C, the hottest month is July, with an average temperature of 23.1 ° C. The highest temperature recorded by the Rimini-Miramare weather station, located at the airport, is 38.9 ° C (August 2000), the lowest is -17.2 ° C (January 1985). The extreme temperatures recorded by the Rimini Lido meteorological station, inside the urban area, are 37.9 ° C (August 1988) and -10.1 ° C (January 1985).

Precipitation is limited (655 mm per year) and regularly distributed throughout the year, with maximum values ​​in October (75 mm) and minimum values ​​in January and July (42 and 43 mm). In spring, autumn and winter the precipitations are mainly brought about by the passage of oceanic perturbations or by the formation of Mediterranean cyclones, while in summer they are more frequently of the convective type, with thunderstorms arriving on the coast from the Apennines or the Po Valley.

 

Humidity is very high all year round, with a minimum of 72% in June and July and a maximum of 84% in November and December. The prevailing winds come from W (Ponente), followed by those from S (Ostro), E (Levante) and NE (Grecale). The SW wind, known as libeccio or garbino, is an exceptionally hot and dry Apennine wind that precedes the arrival of Atlantic depressions, bringing very high temperatures in every season. The average insolation, for the period 1961-1990, is over 2,040 hours of sunshine per year.

 

History

The origins and the Roman age
The first traces of human settlement in the Rimini area date back to the lower Paleolithic (over 800,000 years ago). The settlement was already favored in ancient times by the geographical position and the morphological characteristics of the area: hills rich in water sources, at the mouth of the wide Marecchia valley (easy communication route with the upper Tiberina valley through the Viamaggio pass) and near the sea, which offered good chances of landing at the mouth of the river.

The arrival of the Celts (390 BC) quickly led to the decline and abandonment of numerous Umbrian-Etruscan settlements and at the same time favored the development of the coastal centers of Ravenna and Rimini. The Gallo-Celtic tribes maintained control of the territory for almost a century, until the battle of Sentino (295 BC), in which the coalition of Gauls, Umbrians, Etruscans and Samnites was defeated by the Romans, who paved the way for the colonization of Gaul. Cisalpina.

In 268 BC, at the mouth of the Ariminus river (today Marecchia), in an area of ​​the Piceno already inhabited previously by the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Greeks, the Picenes and the Gauls, the Romans "founded" the colony of Ariminum under the Latin law. . The status of a Latin colony, usually conferred on cities founded for the purpose of controlling and defending new territories, gave Ariminum the role of an autonomous state, linked to Rome by treaties that regulated its trade, defense and foreign relations.

Ariminum was the hub of important communication routes between Northern and Central Italy: the Via Flaminia (220 BC), coming from Rome, the Via Emilia (187 BC), directed to Piacenza, and the Via Popilia-Annia (132 BC) , which connected the city to Ravenna, Adria, Padua, Altinum and Aquileia. Of great importance was that the Port of Rimini represented the defensive line of the Roman fleet in the upper Adriatic, while Brindisi was the one in the lower Adriatic. Furthermore, Rimini and Arezzo were the defense cities with settled legions at the time of the Second Punic War.

During the last century of the Republican age the city was involved in civil wars, always remaining faithful to the Roman people and to Gaius Marius [24]. For his secular loyalty to Rome, Ariminum was recognized in 90 BC. Roman citizenship and the rank of first Cispadano municipality. In 49 BC, after the passage of the Rubicon (which marked the beginning of the urban territory of Rome, the Pomerium, and whose identification is still uncertain), Julius Caesar addressed a speech to his legions in the Forum of Rimini, pronouncing the famous phrase "Alea iacta est" (the die is cast).

In the early imperial age Rimini enjoyed a long period of prosperity and urban renewal, and with the emperors Augustus, Tiberius and Hadrian, great public works were built, such as the Arch of Augustus, the Tiberius Bridge, the theater and the amphitheater. A general rearrangement involved the aqueduct network, the sewer system and the city streets, which were paved and raised in some sections.

From the third century AD, now having lost that direct role in the history of Italy that the city had achieved at the time of Augustus, Ariminum was subject to a progressive decline and social and cultural transformations, including the spread of oriental cults, due to commercial and in the presence of numerous foreign officials and merchants. The first barbarian invasions, faced with the construction of a new city wall in the Aurelian age, led to an inexorable decline and an arrest of urban expansion.

Rimini, already a bishopric since 313, hosted in 359 a council of over 300 Western bishops in defense of Catholic orthodoxy against Arianism, a religion professed by many Germanic peoples who had invaded Italy. According to tradition, the first Rimini bishop was San Gaudenzio, who came from Ephesus and was killed by the Arians in 360.

The middle Ages
In late ancient times Rimini was involved in the events of the Greek-Gothic war, which decimated the population and led to a progressive abandonment of some areas inside the walls. In 538 the city was besieged by the troops of the Goth Vitige, who wanted to make it a military garrison for the defense of Ravenna, was occupied by the Goths in 549 and finally conquered by the Byzantine general Narsete.

 

Under the Byzantine domination the maritime Pentapolis was established, made up of the cities of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Senigallia and Ancona. The territory of the Pentapolis, together with that of the Exarchate, was donated to the Church in 756 by the king of the Franks, Pepin.

The city became a free municipality during the 12th century, during the period of investiture struggles between the Church and the Empire. In the thirteenth century a period of intense urban planning and construction began. The center of civil power became the Piazza del Comune (now Piazza Cavour), where the Palazzo dell'Arengo and the Palazzo del Podestà were built. For centuries the ancient Forum hosted the market and, subsequently, tournaments and equestrian jousting.

The most powerful noble families of Rimini, the Gambacerri Guelphs and the Parcitadi Ghibellines, contended for civil power throughout the thirteenth century. After a first phase in which the city espoused the Ghibelline cause, Rimini became Guelph, thanks to the advent of the Malatesta da Verucchio family, whose progenitor was Malatesta the Elder, also known as the Mastin Vecchio and mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy.

The Malatesta lordship
The Malatestas assumed pre-eminence among the Guelphs of Rimini in 1248, after the rout suffered in Parma by the Emperor Frederick II of Swabia. Malatesta the Elder brought the Gambacerri exiles back to the government of the city, becoming a very popular and prestigious figure.

In 1295 Rimini, definitively defeated by the Parcitadi, was conquered by the Malatesta, who made it the capital of the lordship. For about two centuries the city had hegemony over a vast territory, which went beyond the geographical borders of Romagna, extending to Sansepolcro (1370-1430), Sestino and Senigallia.

On the death of Malatestino (1317), Pandolfo Malatesta became lord of Rimini; after his death the city passed into the hands of Ferrantino, while his sons Galeotto and Malatesta "guastafamiglia" belonged to the territories of the Marches. In 1343, after a long period of disagreements and infighting between the members of the family, Galeotto and Malatesta themselves came to power in Rimini. The dominion over Rimini first passed into the hands of Galeotto I (1364) and then of Carlo (1385), who distinguished himself for political and diplomatic skills.

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, who came to power in 1432, was an unscrupulous captain of fortune and at the same time a great patron. Sigismondo first served in papal pay against the Visconti, then alongside Francesco Sforza against the Pope, with the league between Florence and Venice, with the Sienese and finally against Pius II. He secured dynastic prestige through careful marriage arrangements, marrying Ginevra d'Este (who died in 1440), Polissena Sforza and, in 1456, Isotta degli Atti, and wanted to give prestige to her name with the construction of the Malatesta Temple and Castel Sismondo. In 1463 Sigismondo was defeated by the papal troops led by Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino and his bitter rival.

On the death of Sigismondo (1468) a period of dynastic struggles began between his sons Sallustio and Roberto, known as "the Magnificent". Valent leader and skilled diplomat, Roberto was excluded from the city government at the behest of Sigismondo himself, but managed to take possession of Rimini, being accused of the death of his brothers and stepmother Isotta. Pandolfo IV, hostile to the local nobility (who nicknamed him "Pandolfaccio"), and his son Sigismondo II were the last lords of the Malatesta family, which had now reached a definitive decline, before its annexation to the Papal States.

In that same 1503, the lords of Romagna, ousted by Duke Cesare Valentino Borgia, taking advantage of the death of their father Pope Alexander VI, offered to submit to the Republic of Venice on condition of regaining their ancient domains: the Venetian Senate accepted and the Serenissima took possession of Rimini, Faenza and other cities. The act deeply irritated the new pontiff, the Genoese Julius II, who, having imprisoned the Borgia, intended to restore the papal possession of those lands. The pope therefore pushed on September 22, 1504 France and the Empire to make a triple treaty with him in Blois for the future partition of the Venetian dominions. In 1505 Venice therefore offered to return the occupied lands to the pope, with the exception of Rimini and Faenza, meanwhile, worried about the growing trade crisis. The pope then urged the new emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg to attack Venice, descending to Italy under the pretext of his coronation trip to Rome.

 

Defeated, however, Maximilian even risked losing Trieste and Fiume and was forced to ask for a truce. When the doge, by virtue of his very ancient episcopal prerogatives, claimed to appoint the new bishop of Vicenza, the main European states found the casus belli to attack the Republic, accused of overriding the pontifical right over the bishops. On 23 March 1500, Julius II publicly joined the Cambrai league with France, the Empire, Spain and the Duchy of Ferrara, launching the interdict on the Serenissima and appointing Duke Alfonso I d'Este as Gonfaloniere of Santa Romana Chiesa. The Venetians were defeated by the French in the Battle of Agnadello. At that point, however, the pope, worried by the growing power of foreigners over Italy, on February 24, 1510, having withdrawn the interdict, allied himself with Venice, excommunicating Alfonso d'Este and calling the Swiss to help. Venice, having survived the danger of the war of the League of Cambrai, kept aloof from the new Italian and European conflicts by focusing on the Turkish threat. At the end of the conflicts, however, she was forced to cede the lands of Romagna to the Papal State.

Rimini in the Papal State
In 1509, after the fall of the Malatesta and the brief period of Venetian domination, the papal government of the city began, which became part of the Legation of Ravenna for almost three hundred years. From a territorial and political point of view, Rimini was no longer the capital of an autonomous state, but rather a marginal city of the papal state.

The city was severely tested by the passage of Charles V's imperial army in 1531 and by the transit of French troops in 1577, who raided the territory. To this were added frequent floods caused by the floods of the Marecchia, serious epidemics and famines, which periodically hit the city and the countryside.

In 1672 the city was shaken by a violent earthquake, which caused the partial collapse of houses and some public buildings, including the town hall, the cathedral, the Teatini church and that of San Francesco di Paola.

The eighteenth century was characterized by a great liveliness of city life, a renewal of the building fabric and a general economic recovery, despite the repetition of floods, passage of armies and earthquakes, which returned to hit the city in December 1786, causing damage large to numerous public and private buildings. To a greater extent than in the previous century, in the eighteenth century Rimini distinguished itself in the field of scientific and literary studies with the work of the scientists Giovanni Bianchi, Giovanni Antonio Battarra and Michele Rosa, the cardinal and historian Giuseppe Garampi and the poet Aurelio Bertola.

 

The 19th century

After Napoleon Bonaparte entered Rimini in February 1797, the city was first annexed to the Cispadan Republic and, from 27 July of the same year, to the Cisalpine Republic. Rimini was conferred - albeit for a short time - the title of capital of the Department of the Rubicon, a qualification that it maintained until the unification of the two Romagna departments, which took place in 1798.

In Rimini on March 30, 1815, arrived from the Kingdom of Naples, Gioacchino Murat launched the Proclamation of Rimini, through which he exhorted the Italians to fight together for the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy.

In 1831 the Austrian troops descended in Romagna to suppress the insurrection that broke out in the Papal State which had led to the creation of the government of the United Italian Provinces by the legations of Ravenna, Forlì, Bologna and Ferrara. At the gates of the city, in the locality of Celle, two thousand volunteers fought a battle against the Austrians; the clash, mentioned by Giuseppe Mazzini in his writing "A night in Rimini", ended with the restitution of the Romagna territory to the Papal State.

On July 30, 1843, the first “Privileged Establishment of the Maritime Baths” was inaugurated, on the model of the already well-established French and Central European seaside resorts.

The annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia took place on February 5, 1860, when the Municipal Council of Rimini voted the provision with only two votes against; the outcome was confirmed by the popular will on 11 March of the same year. The following year Rimini was reached by the Bologna-Ancona railway (1861). The railway, located at the sea of ​​the city, in the perspective of a future development of the port, allowed easier connections with the rest of Italy, contributing decisively to the great development of the tourist economy.

 

After the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy, Rimini continued to be at the center of political events of great importance. In 1872 the city hosted the conference that sanctioned the birth of anarchism and the contextual division of Mikhail Bakunin's anarchists from the followers of Karl Marx; two years later, in 1874, at Villa Ruffi, at the historic meeting between anarchists and republicans, Aurelio Saffi and Alessandro Fortis were arrested on charges of insurrectional conspiracy. In August 1881 Andrea Costa founded the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Romagna in Rimini.

 

The twentieth century

On 24 May 1915, the day following Italy's declaration of war against Austria-Hungary, and on 18 June of the same year, Rimini suffered Austrian naval bombardments, which caused extensive damage but no casualties. In December 1915 and in the first months of 1916 the city suffered the first enemy air raids, by Austrian bombers that took off from Pola and aimed at the railway workshops. The difficult situation created by the hostilities of the First World War had serious repercussions on the city economy, due to the closure of the bathing season. In 1916 a strong earthquake seriously damaged historic buildings, churches and monuments, including the church of Sant'Agostino, the town hall and the Vittorio Emanuele II Theater.

In 1922 Riccione, at the time a fraction of the municipality of Rimini, which had rapidly developed as a seaside resort, became a municipality in its own right. With the fascist regime, elite tourism was supplanted by the birth of mass tourism, with the construction of numerous hotels, pensions and villas, and the opening of marine colonies in the suburbs; the historic city was instead affected by the renovation of the Borgo San Giuliano (1931) and the isolation of the Arch of Augustus (1938). In the same period, works of great importance for the future urban layout were built, including the Marecchia diverter (1931), the seafront (starting from 1935) and the Rimini-Miramare airport (1938). In 1939 the airport became the seat of an air force department and a stopover for the Rome-Venice airline.

During the Second World War, between 1 November 1943 and September 1944 during the Olive Operation, whose purpose was to break through the Gothic Line, 11,510 air missions were carried out over Rimini, of which 486 on the single day of 18 September, and 754 armored vehicles were destroyed or damaged. According to a German estimate, by the end of the battle more than 80% of Rimini had been razed to the ground and thousands of civilians perished in the clashes and bombings. The people of Rimini left the city, now almost completely destroyed, to take refuge in the surrounding countryside and in the nearby Republic of San Marino, which declared itself neutral and therefore considered safe. Between 25 August and 30 September 1944, the German forces, commanded by General Traugott Herr, and the Allied forces (United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Greece), led by General Harold Alexander, clashed near Rimini, near the Linea Gothic, fighting one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Italian campaign. Rimini was released on 22 September.

The second post-war period was characterized by a rapid reconstruction and an enormous growth of the tourism sector. The main hotels were the Grand Hotel (Arpesella), the Villa Rosa Riviera (Marchetti), the Excelsior Savoia, the Golden Eagle (Grossi), the Amati hotel (Amati). Rimini, thanks to these pioneering hoteliers, the round of bills, the Credito Romagnolo and the airport, had become one of the most important tourist resorts in Italy and Europe. It experienced a strong demographic increase: the approximately 77,000 inhabitants in 1951 became over 100,000 in 1963 due to the migratory movement from the hinterland, despite the foundation of the new municipality of Bellaria-Igea Marina (1956). In 1992 Rimini became the capital of the province of the same name, obtaining administrative autonomy from the Province of Forlì.