Arch of Augustus
Start where Roman travellers arrived. The Arch of Augustus, Arco di Augusto to locals, has stood here since 27 BC, the same year Augustus became the first Roman emperor. The Roman Senate commissioned it in his honour, and it marked the northern end of the Via Flaminia, the road to Rome built in 220 BC by Gaius Flaminius. Through this gate the road turned into the town's main street, the decumanus maximus, which you know today as Corso d'Augusto.
It looks like a triumphal arch, and it is counted as the oldest preserved one in Italy, yet scholars point out that it worked as a city gate rather than a victory monument. It went up while the Via Flaminia was being restored and Ariminum was renamed Colonia Augusta Ariminensis, which tied the town to Augustus for good. It probably replaced an earlier gate about which little is known, and the houses around it were among the most elegantly decorated in Roman Rimini.
Notice how alone it stands. Under Fascism the city walls and buildings that joined it were demolished, leaving the arch as an isolated monument. Because Rimini sits on a strategic passage along the Adriatic, army after army has marched through here, which is why the art historian Antonio Paolucci called the arch “the eye of Italy's needle”. Together with the Tiberius Bridge, where this walk ends, it appears on the city's coat of arms.
There is no ticket and no closing time. From here it is 430 metres, about 6 minutes, to the Tempio Malatestiano, where the story jumps some fifteen centuries to the Renaissance lord who left his mark all over Rimini.
