Tempio Malatestiano

Run your hand along the side of this building, and the stone feels cool and smooth. It is pale marble, cut into tall arches, and each arch holds a heavy stone coffin. Traffic hums nearby. Pigeons settle on the ledges. Yet this calm wall carries one of the strangest stories of the Italian Renaissance. It is a story of ambition, love, scandal and a project that was never finished.

You are standing before the Tempio Malatestiano, the cathedral of Rimini. The name means the Malatesta Temple. The word temple is a clue. It sounds pagan and classical, not Christian. It was never the official name. It is the name people gave the building because of the man behind it, and because of what he tried to make it into.

That man was Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini in the fifteenth century. He was a soldier for hire, a commander who sold his skill to popes and princes. He was also a serious patron of art and learning. Around 1450, he decided to remake the old Franciscan church that stood here. It was a modest Gothic building from the thirteenth century. Sigismondo wanted it to become a monument to himself and his family.

He chose one of the great minds of the age for the outside. Leon Battista Alberti was an architect, a writer and a scholar of ancient Rome. Alberti did not tear down the old church. Instead, he wrapped it in a new shell of stone, like a classical case around a medieval core. If you look closely at the joins, you can still sense the older building inside the newer one.

Now look at the front. Here is the first surprise. Alberti took his idea from a Roman monument just a short walk away, the Arch of Augustus. That arch was built in ancient times at the entrance to Rimini. Alberti repeated its form here. There is a large central arch, framed by columns, with round decorative discs above. In effect, he turned a church door into a Roman triumphal arch, the kind built to celebrate a victorious emperor.

Your eye may notice that the upper part of the front feels incomplete. It is. Sigismondo's fortunes collapsed before the work was done. A bronze medal made for the project shows what was planned. It shows a great round dome rising behind the facade, in the style of ancient Rome. That dome was never built. So the building you see is a fragment of a grander dream, frozen part way.

Walk along the sides again. Those deep arches with stone coffins were meant for the learned men of Sigismondo's court — poets, scholars and thinkers. Here is the second surprise. One coffin holds the remains of Gemistus Pletho, a Greek philosopher from the Byzantine world. Sigismondo brought his bones back to Rimini after a military campaign in Greece. For a Renaissance prince, honouring a famous scholar was a way to claim a share of his wisdom.

Look for Greek letters carved into the stone along the side. They are part of the dedication. Greek was the language of the ancient philosophers, and Sigismondo wanted the building to speak to educated visitors in that language. It was a statement. This ruler did not want to be seen only as a soldier. He wanted to be seen as a heir to the classical world.

Step inside, and the mood changes. The space is long and fairly plain overall, with a wooden roof. But the side chapels are full of carved detail. The sculptor Agostino di Duccio worked here, alongside Matteo de' Pasti, who directed much of the interior. You will find soft, low reliefs of angels, musicians, children at play, the planets and the signs of the zodiac. The carving is shallow, almost like drawing in stone, and the figures seem to float.

Almost everywhere, you will also find two letters woven together, S and I. Many say they stand for Sigismondo and Isotta. Isotta degli Atti was his lover for many years, and later his wife. Some scholars argue the monogram means something else, perhaps the first letters of his own name. The debate continues. You will also spot elephants, a symbol of the Malatesta family, carved as if carrying the weight of the columns.

All of this caused trouble. Pope Pius II was Sigismondo's bitter enemy. He condemned the lord of Rimini and accused him of many crimes. He also attacked the building itself, saying it was so full of pagan images that it seemed a temple for worshippers of false gods, not a church. In Rome, Sigismondo was burned in effigy, a public ritual of shame. His power faded soon afterwards, and the work here stopped.

The building holds two great paintings worth your time. One is a fresco by Piero della Francesca, from 1451. It shows Sigismondo kneeling before his name saint, Saint Sigismund, with two hunting dogs at his side and a view of his castle. The other is a painted crucifix attributed to Giotto, one of the founders of Italian painting. It is older than the Renaissance work around it. It is a quiet link back to the Franciscan church that stood here first.

The building has lived through hard times since. It became the cathedral of Rimini in the early nineteenth century. During the Second World War, bombing badly damaged it. After the war, it was carefully taken apart and rebuilt, much of it stone by stone. So part of what you see is a story of patient repair, as well as one of Renaissance ambition.

Before you move on, step back into the square and look once more at the front. Notice the empty space above the arch, where the plan was never completed. Notice the light on the marble, and how the old Roman idea fits into a modern Italian street. As you walk away, you might pass the Arch of Augustus itself. When you do, look up. You will see the model that Alberti followed, almost two thousand years old, still standing.