Overview
Also known as the Cathedral of Santa Colomba, the Malatesta Temple is the main place of Catholic worship in Rimini and was built at the request of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the fifteenth century.
The building, which remained unfinished at his death, stands on the site of the Church of S. Maria in Trivio and, since the 13th century, the Church of S. Francesco, a trace of which remains in Giotto's Crucifix, the only work by the artist in the city, located behind the altar. The project was entrusted to Leon Battista Alberti, who recovered the Roman tradition in the façade and sides, thought of as a marble casing with a pediment and a sequence of arches reminiscent of theArch of Augustus and the Tiberius Bridge.
Inside, you can admire the simplicity of the single room with wooden trusses and deep side chapels, dedicated, as in a pagan temple, to the Liberal Arts, the Zodiac, the Children's Games, the Sibyls and the Prophets and decorated in the same theme. Two more chapels are dedicated to the tombs of Sigismondo and his third wife Isotta. The last chapel on the right and the one on the left are later than the Malatesta era: here you can admire the fresco of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in prayer in front of San Sigismondo di Piero della Francesca of 1451.
Near the church, you will find the convent and the cemetery where some members of the Malatesta family were buried.
