Rimini e Cesena

The volume features the Romagna of the Malatesta family, with its history and artistic wonders. Like a Pausanias of our time, the art historian Antonio Paolucci, from Rimini, accompanies the reader on a domestic periegesis, street by street, building by building; from the traces of city's central role in Roman times to the Malatesta Temple, commissioned by Sigismondo Malatesta and masterfully designed by Leon Battista Alberti as a monument intended to celebrate, all together, St. Francis, the ancient gods, the ancient zodiacal wisdom and, as a sort of Taj Mahal for Isotta degli Atti; the church of Sant'Agostino, one of the most valuable testimonials to the origins of the Rimini school of painting is refined and exquisite; the Malatesta Library is a perfect document of 15th-century Humanism. And again, Rosita Copioli, also from Rimini, shows us local myths and genealogies - from prehistory to Fellini - in an irresistible whirlwind of reflections, references and revelations; finally, Silvia Ronchey presents a monographic study on the relationship between the Malatesta family and the Peloponnese, at the time when Byzantium was dying out and the gods were appearing again in the West.