The archaeological collection of the Museo di Rimini, organized by Luigi Tassini in 1844, and the art gallery, founded in 1924. Equipped with modern educational and informational services, the museum houses materials from excavations and archaeological finds, demolished buildings, deposits, and donations that document the history of Rimini and its territory. The first core of the civic collections was the lapidary, arranged in 1981 in the inner courtyard of the college under the care of Giancarlo Susini and Angela Donati. It consists of 68 inscriptions from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD.
In addition to important funerary stelae and honorary bases, there are architectural fragments and elements of notable building interest, such as in the case of the inscription regarding the paving of Rimini’s roads promoted by Gaius Caesar. The archaeological section of the Museo di Rimini unfolds starting from the basements of the Collegio dei Gesuiti, where in about forty rooms the entire history of Rimini is revisited, from the first evidence of Homo erectus found on the Covignano hill, to the founding of Ariminum in 268 BC by the Romans and the city’s development in the Republican and mid-Imperial era.
The journey then continues with an in-depth look at the historical evolution of Rimini in the Imperial period, during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. The varied and beautiful series of Roman mosaics, including the famous “boats” mosaic from the domus of Palazzo Diotallevi and the “Anubis” mosaic, is joined by the very rare polychrome glass paste panel depicting fish and the richest surgical kit of antiquity, both discovered in the nearby Domus of the Surgeon which, recently converted into a museum, constitutes the natural external continuation of the museum itinerary.
The journey of the Rimini Museum
The museum path unfolds in about seventy rooms spread over three floors. The historical-artistic section of the Rimini Museum, with about five hundred exhibited works, allows a complete visit to the Rimini artistic journey from the 14th to the 19th century, which opens with the famous 14th-century school represented by Giuliano and Giovanni da Rimini and their pupils. The Malatesta period is recalled by the famous Pietà by Giovanni Bellini (1460) and the equally well-known altarpiece of St. Vincent Ferrer by Ghirlandaio (1494), followed by works by Benedetto and Bartolomeo Coda, (such as the altarpiece by Benedetto Coda Madonna with Child and Saints, and The Last Supper by Bartolomeo Coda) Bagnacavallo, Mastelletta, Salvator Rosa, Guercino, Cagnacci, Maffei, Piazzetta, Marchetti, Pittoni, and Bigari.
A section of the Rimini Museum is dedicated to the 19th-century Rimini painter Guglielmo Bilancioni; two rooms are instead reserved for drawings, paintings, and graphic works by René Gruau, an artist who worked with the greatest tailors including Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, and Balenciaga. Among the testimonies of local history, there are also nine tapestries that adorned the municipal halls, woven in Antwerp in the 18th century based on cartoons by A. van Diepenberk; the famous “saracen” used in 17th-century jousts and the series of coats of arms (16th-17th centuries) coming from the most important city palaces together with other stone fragments.
The importance of the city of Ariminum, the earliest Roman foundation in Emilia-Romagna, is perfectly highlighted in the archaeological section of the Rimini Museum by a succession of themes that constitute a complete presentation of the city, its relations with its motherland Rome, its political-social organization, its flourishing economy, and equally flourishing productive activities.
An extraordinary selection of materials from the Rimini Museum documents its forms of craftsmanship, evokes domestic environments with their furnishings, equipment, and precious household items re-proposed through objects coming from the rich city domus, extols the relations maintained by the port city with the sea and the trade with the East and Africa, reconstructs forms of public and private worship, and presents some great urban architectural evidence such as the amphitheater.
Finally, an absolutely prominent place is deserved by the reconstructions related to the House of the Surgeon, of which the public is presented with facsimiles of some rooms: the medical study, the bedroom, the dining room with furniture, flooring, decorations, and household items ascertained during the archaeological excavation. The house was indeed equipped with precious fittings such as mosaics, plasterworks, and colorful and precious wall decorations. As is known, the investigations carried out there also allowed the recovery of the surgeon’s almost complete professional kit, which represents a fundamental material and cultural testimony of medical practice in antiquity. As a whole, the house constitutes a rare case of an ambulatory complex that combines the doctor’s residence with environments intended for reception, visiting and treating patients, as well as spaces used for preparing medicines. Source: MIBACT
Information about the Rimini City Museum
Via Tonini, 1, 47921
Rimini
Tel.054121482
Email: musei@comune.rimini.it
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 8.30-13 and 16-19 Sunday and holidays 10-12.30 and 15-19
