Piazza Tre Martiri, Rimini — the Roman Forum and the Square of the Three Martyrs

History

Ariminum was founded in 268 BC, and its forum stood where this square is now — larger than the square, running as far as today’s via San Michelino in Foro, and paved with big rectangular stones. Honorary statues and fine buildings framed it; a stone base at the eastern end probably carried an arch that marked the entrance to the forum and may have closed it to carts. A sixteenth-century cippus records the speech Caesar is said to have made to his legions here after crossing the Rubicon, and in his memory the square — which once bore his name — holds a bronze statue, a copy of a Roman original. On the seaward side, from late antiquity, stood the churches of San Michele, Sant’Innocenza and San Giorgio, all now gone.

In the Middle Ages, with civic government moved to Piazza Cavour, this became the market. Produce came in from the countryside through via dei Magnani — now via Garibaldi — under an arch cut through the line of houses. Under the porticoes were the beccherie, the butchers’ shops. The square also held jousts and tournaments, public ceremonies of the Malatesta, and the finish of the annual palio of San Giuliano.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the little temple of Sant’Antonio da Padova was built in memory of the thirteenth-century miracle in which a mule knelt to the consecrated host; it was rebuilt in the seventeenth century and altered again by later restorations. Behind it, in the early 1600s, the Minims of St Francis of Paola founded a church, rebuilt in 1729; since 1963 the church of the Paolotti has stood on the site. In 1547 the block containing the clock tower went up, replacing the butchers’ shops with porticoed buildings and giving the square the shape and size it still has. The tower was remade in 1759 to a design by Francesco Buonamici, and its upper part was taken down after the earthquake of 1875; Rimini Turismo records a further restoration in 1933. Since 1750 it has carried, below the clock, a dial with a calendar, the zodiac and the phases of the moon. The Magnani arch was demolished in 1921, breaking the line of buildings on the south side.

At dawn on 16 August 1944 three young partisans — Mario Capelli, Luigi Nicolò and Adelio Pagliarani — were hanged in this square, then still called Piazza Giulio Cesare. The plaque beneath the clock tower, set up by the partisans’ association, names them and says plainly what happened: in questa piazza soffocati dal capestro nazi-fascista eroicamente morirono il 16 agosto 1944. The square took their name. A marble insert marks the exact spot; the monument there dates from the early 1990s, two bands of travertine and stone blocks with three spotlights set where the gallows stood. For the eightieth anniversary in 2024 the municipality framed it so that vehicles and passers-by no longer cross it, and added a lectern explaining what it is.