Tonino Guerra and the Places of the Soul

Tonino Guerra is an internationally renowned poet and screenwriter.
He was born on 16 March 1920 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, where he returned after living in Rome for thirty years although he now lives in Pennabilli. Both his literary and cinematographic careers are dotted with prestigious awards.

He worked as a screenwriter for some of the world’s greatest film directors including Vittorio De Sica, brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Francesco Rosi, Theo Anghelopulos, Andrej Tarkowskij, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini.
But Guerra is much more than this; he is a multidisciplinary artist, dedicating his talents to painting, ceramics, landscape architecture and artistic inventions in all fields. This has led him to create fountains, designs, installations, gardens and furnishings.

His work can be found all over the province of Rimini and should be sought out for its beauty and mysterious charm. Also worth discovering are the parks, fountains, gardens, restaurants and hotels that bear his signature and that he has called The Places of the Soul. They form an itinerary that moves the soul and stimulates the imagination.
Starting from the upper Marecchia valley, one of the places worth visiting is Bascio Tower, near Pennabilli, where he has created The Petrified Garden so as “not to forget great figures”. He placed The Great Rose in Casteldelci to honour the fallen, in Petrella Guidi there are words that recall Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina and in Sant’Agata Feltria the Snail Fountain is an ode to slowness.

The entire old town of Pennabilli is an imaginative mosaic; its tesserae include The Orchard of Forgotten Fruits, a “museum of flavours” that brings together forgotten trees surrounded by lots of installations, The Road of Sundials “so as not to forget that time was once measured with light”, The Angel with Moustache a “museum with a single painting”, The Refuge of Abandoned Madonnas dedicated to those that once adorned roadside chapels and The World of Tonino Guerra, a museum that offers an all-round view of his work and where he can often be found.

On the bank of the river, thanks to one of his “cries for a beautiful thing”, the Sanctuary of Saiano has been saved and in the mid-valley the gushing water of other fountains can be heard such as The Water Tree in Torriana and The Fountain of Memory in Poggio Berni. Santarcangelo also has a wealth of his creations: The Fountain of the Underground Lawn, The Fountain of Piazza Grande, The Drinking Fountain of Francesca da Rimini at Hotel Il Villino and La Sangiovesa, a modern reworking of an old inn and a treasure trove of pieces designed by Guerra because “you eat with your eyes too”.

Also in the town, Hotel della Porta has a collection of his rare mosaics. Finally, near the sea in Riccione, at the end of Viale Ceccarini stands The Rain Wood Fountain – designed to cool from the summer heat.