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Rimini is the most imagined city in Italy. First, because it does not coincide with its administrative perimeter; on the contrary, it widens it by a lot: it begins in an indistinct point on the Adriatic coast, towards the north (the shores of Ravenna or perhaps further up, in sight of Venice…), and ends on the via Panoramica of Gabicce Mare, on the slopes of San Bartolo, the promontory that acts as a caesura between up and down, between the coast here and the sea of the Marches.
But it’s not just a matter of space, perceived differently from how the cards define it. Because papers are cold, you know, if what’s written on them doesn’t remain in the reader’s blood.
There is more. In addition to space, there is something about time and, in particular, the time of childhood. I mean that in Rimini, indeed along that hundred kilometers of coast that reaches as far as Gabicce, several generations of children have lived their summer dreams who, season after season, have taken the measure of life, with love, with death. In the summer compression, the little vacationers of at least four generations have collectively formulated, spontaneously and in a completely different way from what has been the case for other vacation spots, a map of feelings of extraordinary evocative power and persistence. The map in question, however, as always when memory is involved, is also full of pitfalls, deceptions, traps.
For many summers too, from the mid-sixties on, I was a child on holiday on the Romagna Riviera, right at its extreme pole, in Gabicce Mare, in the last boarding house before the ascent to Monte.
I was thinking of this crossroads of memories and red herrings that life, putting us to the test without any regard, continually puts us through, on a Saturday a few months ago walking through the halls of the Rimini museum. I was there for the wedding ceremony of two good writer friends, Silvia and Lorenza, and being early, I took the opportunity to review once again, without haste or method, the surprising wonders of that small museum.