Rimini Marina Centro
Where it is
Marina Centro is the heart of Rimini-by-the-sea, about 1 km from the old town centre, where the Grand Hotel rises in front of Piazzale Fellini.
Why visit it
There are many hearts beating in Rimini's "movida" that, depending on the seasons, light up the nocturnal fun: in summer one of them is the area of the port and Marina centro, full of street bars and live music. Restaurants offer menus based on local food, first of all on fish, often grilled in the well-known 'rustide' or cooked in excellent sauces.
Here the first beach resort was established in 1843. Thanks to Count Baldini and Dr. Tintori, Rimini invented the seaside holiday. Summer after summer, more and more people began to spend long weeks in Rimini. In 1869 the Municipality took over the Tintori-Baldini resort and commissioned a well-known doctor, Paolo Mantegazza, a specialist in thalassotherapy, to design and manage a new "Grandiose Beach Resort". From then on, what once was therapy based on sea water, in Rimini turned into a pleasant escape from the daily grind. A revolution that, from the time of the belle époque and its villas, brought Rimini towards the creation of the largest and most efficient organized beach in the modern world.
Today, Piazzale Fellini, with its park and the Fontana dei quattro cavalli (Fountain of the four horses), is a central venue in the summer period, a corner always full of life, a scenario for special events. The Grand Hotel is the emblem of Marina Centro, a liberty style national monument and mythical place of Fellini’s adolescence, immortalized in 'Amarcord'.
When to go and what to see
Marina Centro should be seen in at least two moments: in the morning, with the spectacle of the sunrise over the sea, when the day begins and the promenades come alive with people walking and sports activities on the beach and in the fitness islands along the new Parco del Mare. And at sunset when the fishing boats return to the port chased by flocks of seagulls. The best place to wait for them is the "palata", as the people of Rimini call it. It is the pier at the end of Lungomare Tintori (the beach promenade): a 200-meter concrete walkway built over the sea. A place to meditate, surrounded by water on the right-hand-side of the port. It is precisely here that Federico Fellini imagined the nocturnal appearance of the ocean liner Rex.
The ancient canal port of Rimini divides the 15 km of the beach promenade and consistis of the original mouth of the Marecchia river, with docks on both sides that allow the mooring of numerous boats. On the opposite side, the new dock of Marina di Rimini stretches out on the left-hand-side of the canal port. Inaugurated in June 2002, it is a very modern and functional dock, with 660 berths, 60 of which for boats in transit, and a body of water of 108,000 square meters, which can be accessed with any sea condition.
Don't miss
Do not miss Piazzale Fellini with the Fountain and the fabulous Grand Hotel. And then the 'palata' of the port, the most popular walk in Rimini, the place depicted in Amarcord by Federico Fellini as the kingdom of sailors and fishermen, still today supervised by the eighteenth-century lighthouse that stands on the canal.