Curiosities and legends of Romagna
Emperors and outlaws, ghosts and goblins, popes, poets and footballers. Every town in Romagna has a story to tell: here you will find the true ones, the invented ones and the ones in between. For each one we tell you where it happened, when, and how much of it is true.
History or legend?
No story matches these words.
No story matches these words.
Rimini and the coast
Where Caesar defied Rome, the devil kicked a bridge and the seaside holiday was born.
Photo: Андрей Романенко, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons1Half and half
The die is cast on the Rubicon
Savignano sul Rubicone, 10 January 49 BC
The Rubicon marked the border of Roman Italy: no general could cross it under arms. Julius Caesar did so with a legion, and it was a declaration of war on Rome. The historian Suetonius has him say “alea iacta est”, the die is cast. For centuries nobody knew for sure which river was the real Rubicon: the Uso, the Pisciatello and the Fiumicino all claimed it. In 1933 the State assigned the name to the Fiumicino, and Savignano di Romagna became Savignano sul Rubicone.
How much is true: The crossing is history. The phrase may not be: according to Plutarch, Caesar said it in Greek, quoting a line by the playwright Menander.
Photo: Terragio67, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons2Half and half
The Devil's Bridge
Rimini, Tiberius Bridge, finished in AD 21
The bridge over the Marecchia was begun by Augustus and finished by Tiberius. Legend has it that Tiberius, desperate because the bridge would not stand, asked the devil for help: in exchange the devil would get the soul of the first to cross it. The bridge was ready in one night, but Tiberius sent a dog across first. The furious devil tried to kick it down: the “goat hoof prints” he left can still be seen on the stone.
How much is true: The devil is a legend, the strength is not: in 552 the Goths damaged it and in 1944 the retreating Germans tried to blow it up. They failed, and after two thousand years the bridge still carries traffic.
Photo: Flying Russian, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons3True story
The only man “canonised to hell”
Rimini and Rome, 1462
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, was a brilliant and ruthless warlord: he had Leon Battista Alberti build the Tempio Malatestiano, but filled it with pagan symbols and with his own initials and those of his beloved Isotta. Pope Pius II, his enemy, did something unheard of in 1462: he declared him damned while still alive, a canonisation in reverse. In Rome his effigy was burned in public.
How much is true: It is history: historians call it the only “reverse canonisation” ever performed. The Tempio is still there, and it is Rimini's cathedral.
Photo: Michele1978rimini, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons4True story
Rimini invents the seaside holiday
Rimini, 1843
In 1843 Counts Alessandro and Ruggero Baldini and the doctor Claudio Tintori opened the Privileged Sea Bathing Establishment on Rimini beach: the sea as a cure, with cabins, showers and services. It was the start of the Riviera. In 1908 came the Grand Hotel, and a boy born in Rimini in 1920, Federico Fellini, turned it into a dream in his films, all the way to “Amarcord”, which in dialect means “I remember”.
How much is true: True story: it is considered the first beach establishment on Italy's Adriatic coast.
Photo: Terragio67, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons5True story
Leonardo draws the harbour
Cesenatico, 1502
In 1502 Leonardo da Vinci toured Romagna as military engineer to Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, who was conquering the region. In Cesenatico he studied and drew the canal harbour, to make it safer and easier to navigate. On the same journey, in Imola, he drew a plan of the town seen from above, one of the first modern maps ever made.
How much is true: History: that is why it is called the “Leonardo canal harbour” today, and in summer it hosts the historic boats of the Maritime Museum.
Photo: Lorenzo Gaudenzi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons6Half and half
Cervia marries the sea
Cervia, Ascension Day 1445
Pietro Barbo, bishop of Cervia and future Pope Paul II, was returning from Venice by sea when he was caught in a storm. It is said that he calmed it by throwing his ring into the waves. The gesture became a vow: since then, every year on Ascension Day, a ring is thrown into the sea off Cervia, and whoever fishes it out will have luck all year.
How much is true: The storm is a legend, the ritual is real and alive: in 2025 the 581st Marriage of the Sea was celebrated.
San Marino
The oldest republic in the world, which said no to Napoleon and made Lincoln a citizen.
Photo: Max Ryazanov, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons7Legend
The stonemason who came from the sea
Monte Titano, 3 September 301
Marinus was a stonemason from the island of Rab, in Dalmatia. He came to Rimini to work, had to flee Emperor Diocletian's persecution of Christians and took refuge on Monte Titano. A noblewoman, Felicissima, gave him the mountain to thank him for healing her son. A small community grew there, founded according to tradition on 3 September 301. His last words are said to have been: “I leave you free from both men”, that is, from the emperor and the pope.
How much is true: It is the founding legend: the date and the phrase come from tradition, not from documents. The motto “Libertas” and the twinning with Rab, however, are real.
Photo: Terragio67, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons8True story
Saying no to Napoleon
San Marino, February 1797
During his Italian campaign, Napoleon Bonaparte sent the scientist Gaspard Monge to San Marino with a generous offer: friendship, gifts and a larger territory, reaching the sea. The regent Antonio Onofri gave thanks and turned the land down: the Republic, he said, was content with its smallness. It accepted only the friendship. This is why Onofri is remembered as Father of the Fatherland.
How much is true: True story, told by the Republic's own records: perhaps a unique case of a State refusing to grow.
Photo: Alexander Gardner, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons9True story
Abraham Lincoln, citizen of San Marino
San Marino and Washington, 1861
In 1861 the Republic of San Marino granted honorary citizenship to the new President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, as a sign of brotherhood between the two republics. Lincoln replied with a letter to the Captains Regent: “Although your dominion is small, your State is nevertheless one of the most honored, in all history.”
How much is true: True story: the letter is preserved and the sentence is engraved on a plaque in the Palazzo Pubblico.
Photo: Terragio67, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons10True story
A hundred thousand refugees at home
San Marino, summer and autumn 1944
In 1944 the Gothic Line front ran a few kilometres away, and Rimini was being bombed. Neutral San Marino opened its borders: with about 15,000 inhabitants it took in about 100,000 displaced people from Romagna and the Marche, sheltered in houses, churches, convents and even in the railway tunnels.
How much is true: The welcome is history. The figure of 100,000 refugees comes from official San Marino sources, not from independent historians.
Photo: Nick.mon, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons11True story
The 8-second goal
Bologna, Dall'Ara stadium, 17 November 1993
Qualifiers for the 1994 World Cup: San Marino against England, who need a big win. A short back pass by Stuart Pearce, and Davide Gualtieri, a young man who sold computers for a living, slips the ball past goalkeeper David Seaman after 8.3 seconds. England won 7 to 1, but did not go to the World Cup.
How much is true: True story: for 23 years it was the fastest goal in the history of World Cup qualifying, until Christian Benteke's in 2016.
Valmarecchia and Montefeltro
Fortresses on cliffs, a child ghost, an alchemist count and the Dalai Lama in a hill town.
Photo: Carlo Pelagalli, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons12Legend
Azzurrina, the girl in the castle
Montebello Castle, Poggio Torriana, 21 June 1375
Guendalina Malatesta, daughter of the lord of Montebello, was albino. In an age when white hair suggested witchcraft, her mother dyed it with herbs that turned it bluish: hence the nickname. On the day of the summer solstice in 1375, during a storm, the girl went down to the cellar to look for her rag ball. The guards heard a scream, and nothing of her was ever found.
How much is true: A legend, but the castle is real and can be visited. It is said that every five years, at the solstice, her voice can still be heard on recordings made at night.
Photo: Bruno Rijsman, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons13True story
Cagliostro dies in San Leo
San Leo fortress, 26 August 1795
Giuseppe Balsamo, known as Count Cagliostro, an alchemist, healer and adventurer famous across Europe, was arrested in Rome by the Inquisition in 1789 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was locked in the fortress of San Leo, on the most inaccessible cliff of Montefeltro, in a cell called “the Little Well”, which could only be entered through a trapdoor in the ceiling. He died there in 1795.
How much is true: True story, with a sequel: in 2009 San Leo and six other Valmarecchia towns moved by referendum from the Marche to Emilia-Romagna.
Photo: PercyFulton, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons14Half and half
The angelic dance of Maiolo
Maiolo, night of 29 to 30 May 1700
After almost two days of non-stop rain, a landslide broke away from the cliff and swept away the castle of Maioletto and almost all the village below it. People explained the disaster as divine punishment: in the village, it was said, they practised the “angelic dance”, rather unchristian night-time dances. The survivors moved a short distance away, where Maiolo stands today.
How much is true: The landslide is history, the dance is legend. Accounts are scarce partly because the town archive burned in 1737.
Photo: Goldmund100, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons15True story
The Dalai Lama in Pennabilli
Pennabilli, from the 1700s to today
Francesco Orazio Olivieri, a Capuchin friar born in Pennabilli in 1680, left as a missionary for Tibet, lived for years in Lhasa, studied the language and met the Dalai Lama of the time. The bond was never broken: today's Dalai Lama has come twice to this hill town, welcomed with full honours. At the top of the town there are still a bell and Tibetan prayer wheels.
How much is true: True story. Pennabilli is also the town chosen by Tonino Guerra, the poet and Fellini's screenwriter, with his “Places of the soul”.
Photo: Federica.tamburini.75, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons16True story
Saint Francis is given a mountain
San Leo, May 1213
Francis of Assisi was passing through Montefeltro with Brother Leo when he heard of a great feast at the castle of San Leo. He climbed to the square and preached before the nobles. Among them was Count Orlando Cattani of Chiusi in Casentino, who was so struck that he asked to speak with him and in the end gave him a mountain where he could pray in peace: La Verna, where Francis would receive the stigmata in 1224.
How much is true: History: the gift of La Verna in 1213 is documented. Dante mentions San Leo too, in Canto IV of Purgatory, to say how steep the climb is.
Photo: Antoine Fleury-Gobert, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons17True story
The cheese hidden in pits
Talamello and Sogliano al Rubicone, since the Middle Ages
In the lands of the Malatesta, to save grain and cheese from raiding armies, farmers hid them in pits dug into the tuff. When they reopened them, the cheese had changed: softer, fragrant, with a strong taste. Fossa cheese was born. In Talamello, the poet Tonino Guerra gave it a name because of its golden colour: “Amber of Talamello”.
How much is true: History: fossa cheese has been a protected DOP product since 2009. The pits are still opened in autumn, and Talamello holds the fair that bears the name Guerra chose.
Photo: Giacomozanni, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons18True story
The Old Mastiff and the wooden throne
Verucchio, 7th century BC and 13th century
Verucchio is the “cradle of the Malatesta”: from here came Malatesta da Verucchio, who conquered Rimini and lived almost a hundred years. Dante, who did not like him, calls him “the old mastiff” in Canto XXVII of the Inferno. But the town's history is much older: between the 9th and 6th centuries BC it was a major centre of the Villanovans, the ancestors of the Etruscans, and in their tombs even a carved wooden throne was found, kept almost whole by the damp soil.
How much is true: All history: the finds are in Verucchio's archaeological museum, and the Malatesta fortress still dominates the valley.
Photo: Piero della Francesca, foto CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons19Half and half
The duke who only showed his profile
San Leo and Urbino, around 1450
The name Montefeltro comes from Mons Feretri, the ancient name of San Leo, the fortress the family came from. The most famous of the Montefeltro, Federico, Duke of Urbino, lost his right eye in a tournament around 1450, struck by a lance. From then on he had himself portrayed only from the left: that is how you see him in Piero della Francesca's famous diptych, now in the Uffizi, with that oddly shaped nose.
How much is true: The lost eye and the profile are history. That he had part of his nose removed to see better with his remaining eye is a hypothesis: some scholars believe it, others do not.
Forlì, Cesena and the hills
Hospitality decided by rings, a princess tasting wine, an outlaw at the theatre and a countess on the walls.
Photo: STFMIC, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons20Half and half
The column of the twelve rings
Bertinoro, Piazza della Libertà, 13th century
In Bertinoro the noble families quarrelled over the honour of hosting strangers. To make peace, so the story goes, Guido del Duca and Arrigo Mainardi had a column raised in the square with twelve rings, one for each family: the ring to which the traveller tied his horse decided in which house he would be a guest. Hence the title “town of hospitality”.
How much is true: The dates are uncertain and today's column was rebuilt about a hundred years ago, but the custom is alive: on the first weekend of September, at the Feast of Hospitality, envelopes with lunch invitations to Bertinoro homes are hung on the rings.
Photo: Gianni Careddu, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons21Legend
Bertinoro, “berti in oro”
Bertinoro, around AD 424
Princess Galla Placidia, daughter of Emperor Theodosius and ruler of Ravenna, was crossing these hills. A farmer offered her the local wine, Albana, in a rough earthenware cup. She tasted it and exclaimed: “You do not deserve such a rough cup, o wine, but to be drunk in gold”, in Italian “berti in oro”. That phrase is said to have given the town its name.
How much is true: It is a legend. Linguists prefer another origin: an ancient “Castrum Brittinorum”, the castle of the Britons, perhaps because of monks who came from Britain. The wine's record, however, is true: in 1987 Albana was the first Italian white wine to obtain the DOCG.
Photo: Perkele, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons22True story
The Passatore takes a town hostage
Forlimpopoli, evening of 25 January 1851
Stefano Pelloni, known as the Passatore because he was the son of a ferryman from Bagnacavallo, was the most feared outlaw in Romagna. That evening his gang entered Forlimpopoli, locked the town's notables in the theatre inside the fortress, where a show was on, and looted their houses. Among the families robbed was that of Pellegrino Artusi: his sister Gertrude never recovered from the shock, and the Artusi family left Romagna for Florence. There Pellegrino would write Italy's most famous cookbook.
How much is true: True story. The Passatore was killed two months later, in March 1851, but the folk song remembers him as “the courteous Passatore”.
Photo: Perkele, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons23Half and half
Caterina Sforza on the walls
Forlì, Rocca di Ravaldino, April 1488
On 14 April 1488 conspirators of the Orsi family killed Girolamo Riario, lord of Forlì. His wife, Caterina Sforza, shut herself in the Rocca di Ravaldino, and the conspirators brought her children under the walls as hostages, threatening to kill them unless she surrendered. She, Niccolò Machiavelli tells us, climbed onto the ramparts, lifted her skirts and shouted that she still had “the means to make more”. She did not surrender, and a few days later she took back the city.
How much is true: The siege and the victory are history. The skirt gesture is told by Machiavelli: many historians think he embellished it a little, but it became the symbol of the “tigress of Forlì”.
Castrocaro and Tuscan Romagna
The Romagna that was Tuscany for centuries: the Medici, spas, Dante and a poet who lost his book.
Photo: Claudio Caravano, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons24True story
The Romagna that was Tuscany
Castrocaro and the valleys, from 1403 to 1923
For more than five centuries a slice of Romagna belonged to Florence: Castrocaro, Modigliana, Rocca San Casciano, Portico, Premilcuore, Bagno di Romagna and other valley towns formed “Tuscan Romagna”. People here spoke Romagnol but obeyed the Medici and then the Grand Dukes. Only in 1923 did these towns move from the province of Florence to that of Forlì.
How much is true: True story, and not entirely over: Marradi, Palazzuolo sul Senio and Firenzuola are still in the province of Florence today, but they speak Romagnol.
Photo: Sandro Botticelli, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons25True story
Dante stings Castrocaro
Purgatory, Canto XIV, early 1300s
In Canto XIV of Purgatory Dante meets Guido del Duca, a nobleman from Bertinoro, who gives him a bitter list of the declining families of Romagna. Among the lines is this one: “Bagnacavallo does well to have no more sons; and Castrocaro does ill, and Conio worse, that still bothers to breed such counts.” In other words: good for Bagnacavallo, whose family of counts has died out; bad for Castrocaro, which keeps producing unworthy counts.
How much is true: History, or rather literature: those are the lines. And Guido del Duca is the same nobleman tradition credits with Bertinoro's column of rings.
Photo: Sailko, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons26True story
A town built from scratch
Terra del Sole, 8 December 1564
Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, wanted a modern fortress on the border with the Papal States. Instead of strengthening the old fortress of Castrocaro, he had a brand new town built nearby, entirely designed on paper: rectangular walls, two castles, monumental gates and a large parade ground in the middle. He called it Eliopoli, Land of the Sun.
How much is true: History: it is one of the rare Renaissance “ideal towns” that was actually built. The abandoned fortress of Castrocaro was restored and reopened in 2000.
Photo: Sailko, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons27True story
Roman waters and new voices
Castrocaro Terme, from antiquity to 1957
Castrocaro's salt-bromine-iodine waters were already known in antiquity, and in Roman times the town was called Salsubium. The modern spa was born in the 1800s and in the 1930s was rebuilt in Art Deco style, with the Festival Pavilion decorated with Tito Chini's ceramics. The Grand Hotel still has Mussolini's suite, almost intact. Since 1957 the town has hosted the Voci Nuove festival, through which singers such as Gigliola Cinquetti and Eros Ramazzotti passed.
How much is true: True story: the Festival Pavilion is one of the finest Art Deco complexes in Italy and can be visited.
Photo: Zebra48bo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons28Half and half
The poet and the lost manuscript
Marradi and Florence, 1913-1914
Dino Campana, a poet from Marradi, took the only copy of his poems to Florence in 1913, a notebook titled “The Longest Day”, and entrusted it to the writers Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici of the magazine Lacerba. They never gave it back: they said they had lost it. Campana, in despair, rebuilt the book and in 1914 had it printed at his own expense by a printer in Marradi: the “Orphic Songs”, among the most important poetry books of the 20th century.
How much is true: The lost notebook is history: it resurfaced in 1971 among Soffici's papers. That Campana rewrote everything from memory, however, is a legend he spread himself: he also used notes and other papers.
Photo: Gianni Careddu, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons29True story
The priest who saved Garibaldi
Trebbio Pass and Modigliana, 21 August 1849
After the fall of the Roman Republic, Giuseppe Garibaldi was fleeing through Romagna pursued by the Austrians, helped by a chain of patriots, the “trafila”. On the night of 21 August 1849 Don Giovanni Verità, a priest from Modigliana, waited two hours for him in the rain at the Trebbio Pass. He hid him in his own house and then took him to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, from where Garibaldi managed to set sail and escape.
How much is true: True story: a 1949 plaque at the pass recalls the meeting, and Don Verità's house in Modigliana is now his museum.
Photo: Giulia Pinzauti, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons30Legend
Beatrice's house and Dante's waterfall
Portico and San Benedetto, Middle Ages
In Portico di Romagna there is a 14th-century palace that tradition says belonged to the Portinari, the family of Beatrice, the woman Dante loved. A little further up, in San Benedetto in Alpe, the Acquacheta stream plunges down a rock face: Dante describes it in Canto XVI of the Inferno, comparing it to the roar of a river of the underworld. The poet is thought to have passed through here during his exile.
How much is true: The waterfall in the Divine Comedy is real. The link between the palace and Beatrice's family comes only from tradition, not from documents.
Faenza
A city that gave its name to a material, and that burns Hannibal every year.
Photo: Museo internazionale delle ceramiche, CC0, Wikimedia Commons31True story
Faenza gave its name to a material
Faenza, from the Renaissance
From the 1400s the workshops of Faenza produced majolica so beautiful and sought after that it was exported all over Europe. In France glazed earthenware took the name of the town: “faïence”, and the same happened in English and German. Even today half the world says “faience” without knowing it is naming a town in Romagna.
How much is true: True story. Faenza's International Museum of Ceramics, founded in 1908, is one of the largest in the world devoted to ceramics.
Photo: Frenk965, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons32Half and half
The Niballo is Hannibal
Faenza, night of 5 January and the June Palio
In the Palio of Faenza the knights of the five districts compete by striking a dummy with a lance: the Niballo, that is Hannibal, the Carthaginian general and symbol of the enemy. The first recorded joust dates back to 1164, in honour of Frederick Barbarossa, guest of the Manfredi. On the night of 5 January, at the Nott de Bisò, a large Niballo is burned in the square at midnight: from the way it falls and the sparks fly, forecasts are made for the year and the Palio, while people drink bisò, hot wine, from ceramic cups.
How much is true: The Palio and the Nott de Bisò are real, living traditions; the Nott de Bisò has been held since 1964. For the word “bisò” there is a popular idea that it comes from “bevi su”, drink up, but there are no serious sources.
Photo: Giovanni Stradano, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons33True story
“Bring the fruit”
Faenza, Castellina castle, 2 May 1285
Friar Alberigo dei Manfredi, a Guelph lord of Faenza, was at odds with his relatives. He pretended to make peace and invited them to dinner. At the end of the meal he said: “Bring the fruit.” It was the signal: hidden assassins came out and killed the guests. Since then in Romagna “Friar Alberigo's fruit” has been a saying for betrayal.
How much is true: True story, and Dante added a terrible idea: in Canto XXXIII of the Inferno he puts Alberigo in hell while he was still alive. His soul is already damned, and on earth his body is driven by a demon.
Photo: autore sconosciuto, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons34True story
The wife who killed the lord
Faenza, May 1488
Galeotto Manfredi, lord of Faenza, had married Francesca Bentivoglio, daughter of the lord of Bologna. The marriage was unhappy and she was jealous. In May 1488 Francesca pretended to be ill and had him called to her room, where she had hidden assassins: when Galeotto came in, they killed him. Their son Astorre was three years old.
How much is true: True story: it is the same year in which, a few kilometres away, Caterina Sforza defied the conspirators from the walls of Forlì. 1488 was a dark year for the lords of Romagna.
Ravenna and the Lower Romagna
An emperor and his hen, Dante's hidden bones, Ferrari's prancing horse and a hoe stuck in a tree.
Photo: Contheman, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons35True story
Dante's stolen bones
Ravenna, from 1519 to 1865
Dante died in exile in Ravenna in 1321, and Florence, which had banished him, wanted his remains back for centuries. In 1519 Pope Leo X, a Medici, authorised the transfer, but when the Florentines opened the sarcophagus they found it empty: the Franciscan friars had taken the bones out through a hole in the wall and hidden them. They stayed walled up for centuries, until on 27 May 1865 a bricklayer working on the building found by chance a wooden box with writing saying Dante's bones were inside.
How much is true: True story. And even today, every September, it is Florence that donates the oil for the lamp on the tomb: a way of apologising for the exile.
Photo: John William Waterhouse, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons36Legend
The emperor's hen
Ravenna, August 410
From 402 Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire: Emperor Honorius had moved there because, between marshes and sea, it was easier to defend. In 410 Alaric's Goths sacked Rome. The historian Procopius tells that when a servant announced to Honorius “Rome has perished”, the emperor was distraught: he was thinking of Roma, his favourite hen. When he realised they meant the city, he calmed down.
How much is true: Ravenna as capital and the sack of Rome are history. The hen is an anecdote told by Procopius more than a century later, probably to mock a weak emperor. The painter Waterhouse made a picture of it in 1883.
Photo: Drake9996, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons37True story
Ferrari's prancing horse comes from Lugo
Lugo, 1918 and 1923
Francesco Baracca, born in Lugo in 1888, was Italy's greatest airman of the First World War, with 34 victories. He had a prancing horse painted on his plane. He died in June 1918 on the Montello. In 1923 a young driver, Enzo Ferrari, won a race in Ravenna and met Baracca's parents. His mother, Countess Paolina, told him to put her son's prancing horse on his cars: it would bring him luck.
How much is true: True story, told by Enzo Ferrari himself. He added the yellow background, the colour of Modena. Lugo has the Baracca museum and monument.
Photo: Remo Emiliani, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons38Legend
The bath of Tiberius's horse
Bagnacavallo, Roman times
The name Bagnacavallo, according to legend, comes from a miraculous spring: Emperor Tiberius's favourite horse, which was ill, bathed in it and was healed. The memory even ended up in the motto of the town's coat of arms. Today Bagnacavallo is famous for its Piazza Nuova, an oval 18th-century square surrounded by a portico, built as a market.
How much is true: A legend. The more serious explanation speaks of a ford near the first village, which could only be crossed on horseback.
Photo: autore sconosciuto, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons39True story
Byron's daughter
Bagnacavallo, convent of San Giovanni, 1821-1822
Lord Byron was living in Ravenna, in love with Countess Teresa Guiccioli. In March 1821 he placed his daughter Allegra, whom he had had with Claire Clairmont, in the Capuchin nuns' boarding school in Bagnacavallo. She was four. The poet Percy Shelley went to visit her, her father never did, and her mother was not allowed to see her. Allegra died of fever in the convent on 20 April 1822, aged five.
How much is true: True story, with a mystery still open: the body was sent to England and buried at Harrow without a headstone, but some letters from the nuns say it stayed in the convent.
Photo: Paolo Monti, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons40True story
Dante praises Bagnacavallo
Purgatory, Canto XIV, early 1300s
It is the same line that stings Castrocaro: “Bagnacavallo does well to have no more sons.” For Dante, Bagnacavallo does well because its family of counts, the Malvicini, was dying out and no longer producing unworthy lords. A backhanded compliment that the people of Bagnacavallo remember with some pride.
How much is true: History, or rather poetry: the line is in Canto XIV of Purgatory, spoken by Guido del Duca of Bertinoro.
Photo: Fabrizio Garrisi, CC0, Wikimedia Commons41Legend
The hoe in the oak
Cotignola, 1382
Young Giacomo Attendolo, known as Muzio, was hoeing a field in Cotignola when he saw a company of mercenaries pass by. He threw his hoe at an oak tree, promising himself: if it stays up there, I go. The hoe got caught in the branches. That night he took a horse from his father's stable and joined the soldiers. He became a great condottiero, nicknamed “Sforza” for his strength, and in 1450 his son Francesco became Duke of Milan.
How much is true: Muzio's career and the Sforza dynasty are history. The hoe is a family legend: archive research also shows that the Attendolo were not poor farmers but one of the leading families of the town.
Photo: autore sconosciuto, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons42True story
Two geniuses from the same village
Fusignano, 1653 and 1946
Fusignano has just over eight thousand inhabitants, yet it has given the world two masters. On 17 February 1653 Arcangelo Corelli was born here, the violinist and composer who taught Baroque Europe the concerto. On 1 April 1946 Arrigo Sacchi was born, the coach who won two European Cups in a row with AC Milan, in 1989 and 1990, and changed the way football is played.
How much is true: True story. The town's auditorium is named after Corelli.
Photo: Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons43True story
Rossini from Lugo
Lugo, 1802-1804
Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro on 29 February 1792, but his family came from Lugo: his father was from Lugo and his grandfather's house is still there. As a boy, between 1802 and 1804, he lived in Lugo and took his first real music lessons from the Malerbi canons, practising on the church organs. In those years he wrote his first sonatas.
How much is true: True story: the family house in Via Giacomo Rocca has become the Casa Rossini museum, and Lugo's theatre has borne his name since 1859.
Photo: GiacomoR94, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons44True story
The town of the Lombard refugees
Massa Lombarda, 1251
Before 1251 the town was called Massa San Paolo. That year about eighty families arrived, fleeing Mantua and Brescia, where the wars and the bullying of the lords of the time were raging. They were taken in here, and the town became “Massa of the Lombards”, then Massa Lombarda.
How much is true: History: the date and the origin of the name are recorded by local sources. Later Massa Lombarda became the “fruit town”, with the first large fruit companies in Romagna.
Photo: Maddy16869, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons45True story
Alfonso's lands
Alfonsine, from 1465
In 1465 the Duke of Ferrara, Borso d'Este, gave Count Teofilo Calcagnini some land along the Po di Primaro: it was woods and marshes. Teofilo began to drain it and his son Alfonso continued the work. The land won from the marsh took his name: “le Alfonsine”. The Calcagnini governed the town until it became a municipality in 1814.
How much is true: History. A piece of those marshes survives in the Alfonsine Nature Reserve, in the Po Delta Park.
Photo: Sperandio Maffeis, CC0, Wikimedia Commons46True story
“Sing, o Goddess” on every computer
Alfonsine, 19 February 1754
Vincenzo Monti, one of the most famous poets of his time, was born in Alfonsine. His best-loved work is his verse translation of Homer's Iliad, the one generations of Italian students learned at school, starting with the first line: “Cantami, o Diva, del Pelide Achille l'ira funesta”, Sing, o Goddess, the baneful wrath of Peleus' son Achilles.
How much is true: True story, with a modern twist: that first line is so famous that it appears as the sample text when you preview a font in Italian Windows. Monti's birthplace is now a visitor centre of the Delta Park.
Comacchio and the Delta
Sunken cities, Roman ships, eel thieves and Garibaldi's escape.
Photo: ArchaiOptix, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons47True story
The Etruscan city under the lagoons
Comacchio, Valle Trebba, 3 April 1922
Ancient writers spoke of Spina, a very rich Greek and Etruscan port at the mouth of the Po, but nobody knew what had become of it. In 1922, during works to drain the Comacchio lagoons, terracotta vases and bronze objects began to emerge from the mud: it was the necropolis of Spina. Over the years archaeologists have excavated more than four thousand tombs.
How much is true: True story: the tombs yielded one of the world's largest collections of painted Greek vases, now in the National Archaeological Museum of Ferrara.
Photo: Lorenzo Gaudenzi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons48True story
Agrippa's ship
Comacchio, Valle Ponti, found in 1981
In 1981, in Valle Ponti, the wreck of a Roman ship emerged, sunk with all its cargo: amphorae, tools, objects from on board and a series of lead ingots. The ingots bear the mark of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the son-in-law and right-hand man of Emperor Augustus. This means the ship can be dated to before 12 BC, the year Agrippa died. On board there were also six small lead temples.
How much is true: True story: the cargo is on display in Comacchio's Delta Antico Museum. The 1990 exhibition that presented it was called “Fortuna Maris”, and the name stuck to the ship.
Photo: Nicola Quirico, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons49True story
The fiocinini, eel thieves
Comacchio, San Pietro quarter, until the 1900s
The Comacchio lagoons were public property and the eels that passed through them were a wealth watched over by guards. The “fiocinini”, armed with harpoons, fished them secretly at night: they lived mostly in the San Pietro quarter, among low houses and little bridges. Guards and fiocinini had challenged each other for centuries, and their stories have become legend in the town.
How much is true: True story. In Comacchio there are about forty eel recipes, the most typical is “a bec d'asan”, donkey's beak style. In the Manifattura dei Marinati they are still marinated the old way.
Photo: Pmk58, CC0, Wikimedia Commons50True story
Magnavacca becomes Porto Garibaldi
Magnavacca and Mandriole, August 1849
In August 1849 Giuseppe Garibaldi was fleeing by sea towards Venice with his wife Anita, pregnant and ill, and a few companions. Austrian ships intercepted the boats, and the group landed on the coast at Magnavacca. A desperate flight through lagoons and pine woods began. Anita died on 4 August 1849 in a farmhouse at Mandriole, near Ravenna. In 1919 Magnavacca took the name Porto Garibaldi.
How much is true: True story: it is the start of the Garibaldi “trafila”, the chain of patriots that brought Garibaldi to safety across the whole of Romagna to Tuscany.
Photo: Maddy16869, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons51True story
The valleys that are not valleys
Comacchio lagoons
Visitors to Comacchio look for the “valli”, the valleys, and find a sheet of flat water stretching to the horizon, home to flamingos. No hills at all: the name “valli” comes from the Latin “vallum”, the embankments built by people to regulate the fresh water of the rivers and the salt water of the sea, and to catch the fish coming in from the Adriatic.
How much is true: True story: the “lavorieri”, the traps that stop the eels heading to sea, have worked like this for centuries.
Dialect, traditions and creatures
Goblins in red caps, lullaby witches, March bonfires and the song everybody knows by heart.
Photo: Nerijp, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons52True story
The striped piadina kiosks
All over Romagna, since the 1900s
The most typical piadina is bought at kiosks: little wooden huts with vertical stripes, built on the model of beach cabins. But watch the colours: they change from area to area. White and red in Forlì and Cesena, white and green in Ravenna. From the colour of the kiosk you can tell which part of Romagna you are in.
How much is true: A real tradition, not a written rule. Piadina romagnola has been a protected IGP product since 2014.
Photo: Sentruper, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons53Legend
E' Mazapégul, the goblin in the red cap
The farmhouses of Romagna, since forever
The Mazapégul is a small hairy goblin with a somewhat cat-like face and a red cap. At night he sits on the chest of sleepers and takes their breath away, hides things, braids the manes of the horses in the stable. He falls in love with pretty girls and torments them with attention. To get rid of him you must steal his cap: without it, he has no powers. In Faenza they call him “mazapedar”, in Cesena “mazapigur”.
How much is true: A peasant legend, told above all in the Apennines above Forlì. Where stealing the cap was not enough, a caveja was planted in front of the house.
Photo: Massimo Saviotti, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons54Legend
La Borda, the witch of the fog
Marshes and lagoons of the plain, in lullabies
Romagnol lullabies featured a frightening figure: La Borda, a witch who lived in the fog of the marshes and ditches and strangled with a rope the children who would not sleep or went too close to the water. Mothers mentioned her to keep their children in bed and away from the canals.
How much is true: A legend with a practical purpose: in a land of canals and fog, scaring children was the surest way to keep them away from the water. An effective educational method, let's say.
Photo: Sentruper, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons55Half and half
The caveja with its rings
The Romagna countryside
The caveja is the iron pin with rings that held the oxen's yoke to the cart. But it was much more: the rings jingled at every step, and from that sound people tried to tell what the weather would be or whether a boy or a girl would be born. It was given as part of a dowry, used to calm storms and, planted in front of the house, kept the Mazapégul away.
How much is true: The object is real, the powers are superstition. Today the caveja is the symbol of Romagna and appears on its flag.
Photo: Maddy16869, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons56True story
Lòm a Mêrz, the bonfires to wake up spring
Farmyards of Romagna, late February and early March
In the last days of February and the first of March farmers lit great bonfires in their farmyards, burning the dry branches from pruning, and sang and danced around them. The dialect name means “lights for March”: they lit up the new month so it would bring spring and a good harvest. In those days people feared the “canuciéra”, an evil influence that could make any work fail.
How much is true: A real tradition that has come back to life: every year, between late February and early March, dozens of farmyards and farms in Romagna light the fires again.
Photo: Congolandia.g, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons57Half and half
Patàca, the most Romagnol word
Rimini and the whole Riviera
If someone in Rimini calls you a “patàca” it is not a compliment: it means a fool, a show-off, someone who puts on airs for no reason. It is the most famous Romagnol word in Italy, and the people of Rimini use it with affection almost as much as with scorn. It comes from “patacca”, a coin or medal of little value: in short, someone who shines but is worth nothing.
How much is true: The meaning is real; the origin from the worthless coin is the most common explanation, but dictionaries do not all agree.
Photo: autore sconosciuto, pubblico dominio, Wikimedia Commons58True story
“Romagna mia” was “Casetta mia”
Gatteo Mare, 1954
Secondo Casadei, the king of liscio ballroom music, wrote the song in 1954 in Gatteo Mare, dedicating it to his home: it was called “Casetta mia”, My little house. But a song with that title already existed, registered by Giovanni D'Anzi in 1943. So in the recording studio, on the advice of his friend Carlo Ferrini, a musician from Faenza, “Casetta” became “Romagna” in the chorus. And the song became the unofficial anthem of a whole land.
How much is true: True story. There are two versions of why the title changed: this one, reconstructed by the musicologist Franco Dell'Amore, is the best documented.
Dates, names and facts checked on 19 October 2026 against historical sources, museums and town websites. Where a fact comes from a single source or only from tradition, we say so. More stories: Famous people · Dialects · Towns
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