ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-u.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429292354/3abb420d-80da-4aed-a9cf-ae5c42b997f9/content/ifig0001.tif"/>On the Adriatic Sea, some twenty miles north of Urbino, lies the popular summer resort of Rimini. A city of nearly eighty thousand people, its population soars in the summer when its many big hotels are packed with Italian and German vacationers and its beaches swarm with sun-worshipers. Signs of past glories are there, but they must be looked for. A handsome Roman bridge with five tall arches begun by Augustus and finished by Tiberius and a triumphal arch erected in honor of Augustus are evidence of Rimini’s antiquity. Two buildings still proclaim Rimini’s importance in the Renaissance: the Church of San Francisco, always called the Tempio Malatestiano, and a huge fortress-palace. Both of these were built by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the ablest and most celebrated member of a fierce and turbulent family which ruled Rimini and many other towns for generations.
