Rimini gets a makeover
By Sally Shalam, Evening Standard
Last updated at 14:33 23 July 2003
Rimini: Getting an injection of class
Get ready for the renaissance of Rimini. The Adriatic resort is best known as a Blackpool of the south, with its seafront strip of thumping, pumping, all-night clubs. It was not always so.
At the turn of the 19th century the Riviera di Rimini was the most fashionable place in Europe.
It was where the first ever recorded sea-bathing took place in Italy - the wife of a Roman nobleman took the plunge in 1790 - and just 50 years later the first Adriatic bathing establishment was inaugurated, heralding a golden era of holiday elegance as the nobility of Europe took to the town and the waters.
All the Riviera di Rimini needed was a grand hotel - exactly what it got in 1908 when Il Grand Hotel di Rimini was completed: 200 rooms wrapped in an icing sugar-white facade, a wide sweeping staircase at its entrance, marble-pillared lobby and Italian Liberty flourishes at every turn.
Mussolini was once a visitor, but it was local hero Federico Fellini who put Rimini and the Grand back on the map when he filmed Amarcord there in the Seventies.
The Grand now has new owners - bringing an end to a period of neglect. A slow restoration is underway, yet the faded grandeur still lends an air of unreality.
Chandeliers are being cleaned, dining-room tables and chairs have been chucked out onto the wraparound stone terrace where meals - delicious, assertive cooking by an Austrian chef who thinks Italian - are now served.
Subtle flourishes are now appearing and by next summer the Grand could be the Claridge's della costa.
Travel facts
British Airways (www.ba.com) flies daily to Bologna, returns from £79.90. Half-board at The Grand (tel: 00 39 0541 56000) is a good deal at '2,030 (£1,439) for two in an executive room for one week this autumn.
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