MONUMENTS PROVINCE OF RIMINI
MONUMENTS RIMINI
The Malatesta Temple
The
origins of the
Church of
St Francis, known
across the world as Malatesta Temple, “peculiar
adornment” of the city of Rimini, as Giovan
Battista Costa wrote in 1765,
date back to 1257. In that year, in fact, the monks of the Order of
Pomposa gave the Church of Santa Maria in Trivio, dating back to the
tenth century, to the Conventuals. The Franciscans built a new Romanic
or late-Romanic Church, in which were preserved many paintings by Giotto,
later destroyed by Sigismondo Malatesta, who, in the mid-fifteenth
century, started to work on the Temple. Fortunately Giotto’s astonishing
Crucifix, painted before 1300, still hangs above the High Altar.
At first Sigismondo Malatesta didn’t intend to renovate in full St
Francis Church, but later, in about 1450, when the works on the vestry
and on his chapel and the one of his wife Isotta degli Atti were over,
he asked the architect Matteo de’ Pasti to modify the interior of the
Church. The famous Agostino di Duccio
collaborated with Matteo de’ Pasti. The
external facades have been designed by the Florentine architect Leon
Battista Alberti. Numerous artists of great distinction worked on the
Temple. Among them were the architects Cristoforo Foschi and Matteo Nuti,
the Florentine sculptors Antonio Cammarotti, Maso di Bartolomeo and
Ottaviano di Duccio, brother to Agostino, and the famed Piero della
Francesca, who, in 1451, painted the famous fresco in the Cell of the
Relics. In 1461 the works commissioned by Sigismondo Malatesta were
interrupted after the excommunication of the same Sigismondo, and the
Franciscans were forced to complete at their expense the temple’s roof
covering, which doesn’t follow the plans of Sigismondo Malatesta. In the
sixteenth century were built, in the area of the apse, five frontal
chapels. In 1548 Vasari started to paint the famous canvas depicting
The Stigmata of St Francis, still in the apse of the Malatesta
Temple. In 1708 some modifications were made in its interior. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century the Malatesta Temple became the
cathedral of Rimini. During World War II the Malatesta Temple was
heavily bombed and suffered profound damage, losing the apse, the roof
and the vestries. Repaired thanks to the Kress Foundation, the Malatesta
Temple has been recently completely restored, recovering its ancient
magnificence.