The Liberty style in Cesenatico accompanied the birth of seaside tourism. The new industry, promoted since 1877 and later becoming the most important resource of this town, has encouraged the construction of villas and hotels in this particular style.
The Liberty style, an artistic movement that developed between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in architecture and applied arts, was inspired by plant forms and nature, and quickly became the style of the new bourgeois class.
Also in Cesenatico this new movement developed due to its originality and decorative elegance and we can still see it today especially in the decorations of the villas and in the wrought iron works of some gates. These buildings are still interesting today to explain how the new seaside resort had taken from Modernism only its exterior use to be applied to what were essentially traditional structures.
The itinerary starts in front of the Municipal Fish Market, a historic building dating back to the important urban redevelopment work that took place between the end of the 1800s and around 1930. Built in 1911, the Municipal Fish Market is an example of a very composed and essential Liberty style.
It is a small rectangular building with a single room, which has a large low arch on the facade; two medallions with a classic and stylized design are visible on the sides of the arch.
Even the delicate chromatism, with the decorative elements in white on the ivory plaster, makes the whole structure sober.
Recently renovated, the building is still today the main place for the retail sale of fresh fish.
Continuing from the Municipal Fish Market along Corso Garibaldi towards the sea, we reach the second stage of the itinerary: Viale Anita Garibaldi. Built in 1894, the Avenue becomes the real access road to the beach and it is in this avenue that the villas built in the early 1900s are still most noticeable today.
We particularly appreciate Villa Rossa at number 14, which dates back to the late 1800s and has Moorish-style arches above the windows, motifs that are also repeated in the gate between the mezzanine and the first floor.
Opposite is the Liberty villa next to the former Hotel Pino which features floral-style decorations, such as window profiles, with compositions of curved lines, leaves and fruit festoons. In particular, we can see the heads of women who, like caryatids, support the beams of the cornice.
Proceeding we arrive at Villa Pompili built in the early 1900s and recently restored. The first thing that catches your eye is the beautiful wrought iron gate, a true artwork, as well as the concrete above the windows and the front door, which show floral-style decorations.
Finally, we remember the Villino Faedi Moretti built between 1903 and 1905 at the end of Viale Anita Garibaldi, at the corner of Viale Carducci, unfortunately destroyed before the end of the Second World War. Among the villas featured in postcards of the time, the Villino Faedi Moretti, with its so decorated and refined imprint, was the only one in Cesenatico in pure Liberty style.
Where today the Grand Hotel Da Vinci stands, between 1920 and 1936 (before the transformation of the structure into a holiday camp), in that place was the annex of the Hotel Eritrea, designed for the holiday elite who frequented Cesenatico at the beginning of the century.
This building, the first of a series of accommodation facilities built in the eastern part of the beach on Viale Carducci, showed a secessionist architectural language typical of an architecture that sublimated, through its forms, the exaltation of the holiday. Transformed in 1936 into a holiday camp for children of the province of Verona, the building has largely lost its Liberty features, except for some details, such as the sinuous staircase on Via Piave.
From the Colonia Veronese, continuing on Viale Carducci towards the skyscraper, at number 59 we find a Liberty style villa still well preserved today. This is the seaside residence of Adolfo Magrini, an architect who worked in Cesenatico on various projects.
The villa, built in a neo-medieval style characterized by Roman and Gothic styles, consists of two floors, three terraces and a lookout tower facing the sea.
Our itinerary ends in Piazza Costa with the Grand Hotel of Cesenatico, built between 1928 and 1929 on a project by the architect Rutilio Ceccolini.
The historic Liberty style hotel is characterized by a sober classicism, which distributes large bright windows, balconies and two large terraces facing the sea on its facades. Like similar monumental buildings in other European cities, it imitates in architecture and furnishings the homes of the great dynasties.
Worldly symbol of this historical period, over the years it has undergone various internal transformations, while maintaining the Liberty style that characterizes it. During the Second World War it was occupied by the German Command and, later, by the Liberation troops as the headquarters of the New Zealand Command. Since 1956 it has been owned by a historic family of hoteliers.
