L'anfiteatro romano di Rimini nelle memorie degli eruditi

The roman amphitheatre of Rimini, built in the mid second century A.D., was reused at the middle of the following one in the construction of the city wall. The area in which today still stand its monumental remains became in brief peripheral and deteriorated, used as cultivable soil and site for the installation of a lazaretto at the end of the fifteenth century. The inner structures of the building were covered by the ground and its memory was handed on only by the memoirs of the scholars. Starting from these, the article intends to focus the attention on the forms of the realization of the wall in the area of the amphitheatre, from the third century to the medieval and post-medieval renovations. In particular, this work checks a nearly unknown report of Jano Planco (Latin name of Giovanni Bianchi), doctor and scholar from Rimini in the eighteenth century, which tells with many details the status quo at his days. One part of the amphitheatre was dug in 1843-1844 by the historian Luigi Tonini, using very advanced archeological techniques. He restored the dignity of the amphitheatre as an important civic monument and inaugurated a long series of scientific studies about it