Hamlet of San Giovanni in Marignano

San Giovanni in Marignano is one of “The Most Beautiful Villages in Italy".

The hamlet with its fortifications and towers is absolutely not to be missed.

Via XX Settembre known as the "middle way" is the main street of the village on which eighteenth and nineteenth-century buildings stand. It is accessed from the square by going through the ancient gate which is actually the fifteenth-century civic tower with a clock. Along the road, paved with salvaged cobblestones, circular stone inserts indicate the grain pits dug underground, over 200 of which have been surveyed; they are evidence of the economic history of the town, formerly a Roman settlement and then a Benedictine possession.

 

The hamlet is surrounded by fourteenth-fifteenth century defensive walls. Along their western stretch, some restoration in the pavement brings to mind the ancient moat.

Inside the course of the walls, reinforced on the sea side by two beautiful pointed bastions, the medieval urban layout offers regular blocks arranged around an open space, where the parish church of Saint Peter was built around the 13th century.