Rimini’s finest building is the Tempio Malatestiano, built as a Franciscan church but converted in 1450 by Leon Battista Alberti,the great Florentine architect, into one of Italy’s great Renaissance monuments. Made of white marble itis a pearl of architecture.The work was commissioned by Sigismondo Malatesta (1417– 68), a descendant of Rimini’s ruling medieval family, and reputedly one of the most evil and ebauched men of his time. Ostensibly designed as a chapel,the Tempio became little more than a monument to Malatesta. Inside are sculptures by Agostino di Duccio and a fresco (1451) by Piero della Francesca of Malatesta kneeling before St. Sigismund (1451). The entwined initials of Malatesta and his fourth wife, Isotta degli Atti, provide a recurring decorative motif,and there are reliefs depicting scenes of bacchanalian excess and oddities such as strangely posed elephants (a Malatesta family emblem). All this led Pope Pius II to condemn the building as “a temple of “devilworshipers” and to burn Malatesta’s effigy for acts of “murder, violation, adultery, incest, sacrilege, and perjury.”
