Rimini by train

This morning we walked to the Pesaro Train station after our breakfast at the Vaccaj sisters Enoteca and bought tickets to Rimini, which is just 20 minutes away. I wanted to see Rimini because of the movie by Federico Fellini, Amarcord (1973). It is my favorite movie of all times, I have seen it about a dozen times at least and I never tire of it. The storyline is simple enough, it’s Fellini’s boyhood recollection of the town around 1926 to 1938, just before the war, when Mussolini was still popular, for some, in Italy. The story revolves around his family and his friends at school, the local priest, his mother, his crazy uncle, the lady of the tobacco shop with the generous bossoms, his old grandfather and his father who was a communist. Fellini laughs at the Fascist and their simplistic ideas for a better world and the Royal house of Savoy for their pretentions. It is also a goodbye to an Italy that no longer exist, an Italy of poverty, when life was still pretty basic, a small close world. The best a the pretty local girl could aspire too, was to marry a Carabinieri and move to Rome.

The train to Rimini is the Regional train which starts somewhere south and ends in Venice with many stops along the way. Rimini station is rather pretty, a belle époque building, circa 1890. We followed the old town circuit first stopping at the Tempio Malatestiano, a church built but never completed by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, Podesta (chief magistrate) of Rimini 1453 to himself and his family. It is unfinished due to the fact that the Malatesta where excommunicated by Pope Pius II in 1460, this church was originally a Franciscan church and Sigismondo took it over, robbed marble from another Christian saint tomb to built his memorial church to himself and his lover Isotta. Inside the usual memorials to the Malatesta family, their symbol was an elephant, the motif appears everywhere, Pope Pius II so much hated Sigismondo that he declared the church to be a Pagan temple, despite this pronouncement it is today the Cathedral of Rimini.

Cathedral of Rimini, Tempio Malatestiana.

Rimini is also famous for Francesca da Polenta da Rimini, who was promised in marriage to one Malatesta brother, the good looking one, Paolo, only to find out on her wedding day that she was to marry the ugly, deformed and older brother Giovanni who in 1285 had her and his brother murdered because he discovered their affair, Dante captures the whole thing in his Divine Comedy. The Malatesta lost it all in 1500 when Cesar Borgia, a good and strong supporter of the Pope defeated them and gave their estate Rimini to the Pope to rule.

We continued to walk towards the Augustus gate C. 14 AD which marks the end of the Flaminian way which starts in Rome on Piazza Venezia. We then crossed the old town towards the Bridge of Tiberius made of Istrian stone and built between 14 and 21 AD, it is still in use and very solid, accommodating cars and people. We then walked towards the Malatesta castle which is a very big ruin in the centre of town, the Popes used the castle for centuries as a jail for their enemies, then on to the old Piazza Cavour which reminded me of the movie scene where they have a snow ball fight and also a motorcycle race around the square, the Piazza is not exactly like in the movie, but then again the movie is just a recollection of souvenirs nothing is exact. On the Piazza a pretty fountain from the Renaissance and a rather stern statue of Pope Paul V, Borghese, not a nice man wearing his Papal Imperial crown with raised hand as if to cast an evil spell.
Tiberius Bridge.


We then walk towards the seashore to the Grand Hotel built in 1908 by a south American architect Paolo Somazzi, this palace hotel figures in the movie as the place where the Prince, was it Amadeo or Umberto, comes to stay one night. In the old days the hotel was closed in winter and only opened from spring to fall. We had a lovely lunch in a grand room of marble columns and crystal chandeliers overlooking the gardens and the sea. It is an hotel where old gentleman still sleep off the afternoon with a newspaper over their faces in the salon of the lobby, the rooms are decorated in period French antiques of the 18th century. It was designated as a National Monument in 1994. Am glad we went to Rimini for the day to see it and put all these movie scenes in a physical space. Though I am sure a lot of Amarcord was in fact filmed on a sound stage at CineCitta in Rome.
Grand Hotel Rimini