Italy Travel & Hotel Guide

The countryside around Rimini is attractive: small hilltop towns and lush gentle valleys covered with firs and chestnuts, much of it connected to the coast by bus. SANTARCÁNGELO , 11km inland and easily accessible by bus or train from Rimini, is worth the short trip for its steep medieval streets and thirteenth-century fortress (June-Sept Tues, Thurs & Sat 10am-noon & 4-7pm; L5000/¬2.58). Carved into the hillside on the edge of the village are some artificial caves, a wet hide-out for primeval Christians in the seventh century. The best bet for local accommodation is the campsite at La Ruspante , but if you need advice follow signs to the tourist office at Via C. Battisti 5 (closed Oct-April, tel 0541.624.270, iat.santarcangelo@iper.net ). It’s also worth visiting Santarcángelo for the village’s restaurants , of which Da Lazaroun at Via del Platano 21 (closed Thurs) is recommended. Osteria della Violina , Vicolo d’Enzi 4 (booking advisable, tel 0541.620.416; closed Wed), occupies a seventeenth-century palazzo with internal courtyard, and has a cheaper section downstairs serving piatti poveri “poor dishes”, which are chalked up on a board and washed down with Sangiovese wine. Santarcángelo is very different from the region’s second tourist attraction (after the beach), the REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO - an unashamed, though not entirely unpleasant, tourist destination that trades on its nearly two millennia of precariously maintained autonomy. Said to have been founded around 300 AD by a monk fleeing the persecutions of Diocletian, it has its own mint, produces its own postage stamps, and has an army of around a thousand men. The ramparts and medieval-style buildings of the citadel above Borgomaggiore, also called “San Marino”, restored this century, are mildly interesting; there is a trumped-up waxworks museum in Via Lapicidi Marini 17 (daily: April-Sept 8.30am-6.30pm; Oct-March 8.30am-12.30pm & 2-5.30pm; L6000/¬3.10), a stamp museum in Piazza Belzotti in Borgomaggiore (Mon & Thurs 8.15am-6pm, Tues, Wed & Fri, 8.15am-2.15pm; free), and other places where you can view suits of armour, as well as tacky souvenir shops and restaurants. And you can also get your passport officially stamped, for only L2000/¬1.03, by the border guards or at the information office at Contrada del Collegio (Mon-Fri 8.30am-6.30pm, Sat & Sun 9am-1pm & 2-6pm, tel 0549.882410 or 0549.882.914). But all the touristy tawdriness aside, it’s a good place just to stroll around; the achievement up through town to the rocce , battlemented castles along the highest three ridges, is worth the effort for the all-round views. Below, in Borgomaggiore, is Giovanni Michelucci’s “fearless and controversial” modernist church, built in the 1960s, with a roof that seems to cascade down in waves.

Category: Rimini