Every design for Rimini

It was in the forum of Rimini, after crossing the Rubicon, that Julius Caesar made his famous appeal to the legions. The town was already old by then: the Romans founded the colonia of Ariminum in 268 BC at the mouth of the river now called the Marecchia, and made it the end point of the Via Flaminia. The Arco d'Augusto still marks where that road arrived, and the Ponte di Tiberio still spans the old course of the river.

Rimini sits at a strategic passage on the Adriatic, at the southern tip of the Po Valley, with low green hills of vineyards and olive groves behind it and San Marino the nearest neighbour inland. The Marecchia was diverted north of the city to stop its floods, and the bed of the Ausa stream was filled in and turned into a park. In front lies a long sandy beach that made Rimini one of Europe's best-known seaside resorts.

The city was badly damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt around its Roman bones and the Castel Sismondo of the Malatesta. It is also where Federico Fellini was born and where he is buried. However many summers of visitors pass through, the people of Rimini know the quieter town underneath, and coming back to it after time away feels like stepping back into their own film.