Rimini has attracted a crowd in August since time immemorial. The internationally renowned summer holiday destination on la Riviera Romagnola is synonymous with long sandy beaches that are hard to beat, especially for families and party-goers.
But this pre-eminent party town has also a deep cultural vibe. It boasts Roman architecture in abundance, including the Arch of Augustus, the Tiberius Bridge and an amphitheater. There is also a Renaissance cathedral to admire and the outstanding nearby settlement of San Leo.
I enjoyed a slow city break in San Leo, a lovely, fortified medieval village perched on the slopes of a soaring rock spur in the heart of Valmarecchia. San Leo is full of surprises and intimacy.Vistas over the principality of San Marino and the surrounding landscape are breathtaking. My line of sight to the horizon gets lost, until my eyes find the sea. The scenery is gorgeous up here amid the jagged peaks of the Apennines and the shimmering Adriatic.
San Leo, the ancient city of the Montefeltro region, was a bone of contention among the Byzantines, the Goths, the Franks and Longobards, and later among noble families such as the Malatesta, the Montefeltro and the Medici. Florentine troops took it in 1517 at the end of a legendary siege described by Giorgio Vasari and illustrated in a majestic painting at the Palazzo Vecchio.
Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca was inspired by this place, while semiotician and globally successful novelist Umberto Eco defined it as the most beautiful Italian town, though it consists of just a fortress and two churches. “San Leo, una Rocca e due chiese, la città più bella d’Italia,” he said in an interview. “Professor Eco had a house in the old monastery area,” says Marco Perazzoni, president of the San Leo Pro Loco, an association promoting local culture and tourism. The famed intellectual received honorary citizenship of San Leo in 2011, on a day he told the press that “here in 36 years I have been taking all my foreign friends to visit the prison cell of Cagliostro.” The occultist Alessandro, Count of Cagliostro, died in San Leo’s impregnable fortress, inside la cella del pozzetto, on August 26, 1795 after more than four years of imprisonment.
The Rocca is captivating: it has a large imposing keep, four square turrets and a gothic entrance. It still has secrets to reveal. “At the time, it was the maximum security prison of the papal state,” explains Perazzoni.
Cagliostro was born Giuseppe Balsamo to a poor family in Palermo.
Fleeing Sicily after a series of minor crimes, he traveled through Greece, Egypt, Persia, Arabia and Rhodes, apparently studying alchemy.
This mysterious character was mocked by Goethe in a comic opera called Il Gran Copto while honored by Mozart in The Magic Flute. He visited the major courts of Europe selling elixirs of youth and love powders. In the years preceding the French Revolution, he enjoyed enormous success in Paris posing as an alchemist, soothsayer and healer as his séances became the rage of fashionable society.
Locked up for nine months in the Bastille, he was then banished from France and in 1789 was arrested in Rome. His wife had denounced him to the Inquisition as a Freemason. He was convicted and sentenced to death but the Pope commuted his penalty to life imprisonment. “My great-great-grandfather, as a child, witnessed the procession that carried the dead body of Cagliostro that day at sunset,” says Perazzoni. “They buried Cagliostro in a desecrated area on the west edge of the boulder.”
The story of the place and its layers of history can be read through the incredible fabric of the tiny city-fortress capable of satisfying even robust appetites for history. “In this prison many patriots of the Risorgimento were later confined,” says Perazzoni.
On the third week of August, a traditional five-day festival dedicated to Cagliostro opens all along the city center. AlchimiAlchimie is for the curious, offering a program packed with esoteric workshops, talks, food and music.
“San Leo is a small oasis in the middle of the valley where you can find your own dimension,” says Perazzoni. “Here you can both sink into ultimate seclusion and experience the richness of local community life.”
About 100 people live in the historic center, while about 400 reside in the area immediately outside the boulder.
More local young people are engaged in agricultural production of ancient grains.
The Little Flowers of Saint Francis reported that the saint of Assisi came to San Leo in 1213. He was invited to the investiture feast of a knight, one of the offspring of the Montefeltros. That night Francis slept on a place where Saint Igne’s monastery was later erected. Francis preached in the main piazza under a massive elm. Count Caetani of Chiusi was so touched by the saint’s sermon that he wanted to give him Mount La Verna as a gift, considering it a suitable solitary place to do penance.
Dante sojourned in San Leo as well. He stayed as a guest at Uguccione della Faggiola’s house on the valley floor. He even mentioned this special place in the Purgatory, canto IV.
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