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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.