Media architecture: Fellini's Rimini, a town of the imagination

With this article, I would like to reflect on the role Fellini played in transform- ing the urban imagery of his hometown, Rimini, into something new. The idea that Fellini represents an ideal, the incarnation of a national character capable of representing twentieth-century Italy is already well known, even if not sufficiently studied. He is a director who becomes an icon of a way of being, of seeing, of imagining, which are internationally associated with a presumed national identity. The geocultural poles of this identity are Rimini, Rome and Cinecittà, and they express some antinomies rich with personal choices, of multiple belonging and full of psychological implications. The artist expresses a titanic mediation between the persistence of an ancient country and metropolitan evasions, in a negotiating process of anthropological and aesthetic tensions. In this article, I intend to analyse different moments of media expansion directly created by Fellini or born around Fellini. I will therefore try to redefine the reputation and the new public image of the native ‘borgo’ of the Italian Maestro.