History of Grand Hotel Riccione

The Grand Hotel Riccione was designed in 1929, by order of Commendatore (one of the italian highest honorary titles) Gaetano Ceschina, by the architect Rutilio Ceccolini of Pesaro.
The building, to whose realization also collaborated the engineer Galeazzo Pullè, was built in the record time of only 100 days.

The construction was so fast that in order to publish an advertising announcement in the Newspaper Giornale di Bologna" in the month of June 1929 the Comm. Cescina used a "photographic assemblage" with many parts of hotel drawn with a pencil.

The building, built with sober and elegant lines with some calls to the style Coppedè, like the use of spheres, the mouldings, the pyramids tronche and the loggia of the fourth floor similar to a Roman house of classical age.
As analogous monumental buildings of other European cities, the hotel imitated in the architecture and in the wealth of furniture and the quality of services, the abodes of the great dynasties.
You can also notice the similarity with the Grand Hotel of Cesenatico also build on the order of Mr. Gaetano Ceschina one year before.

The Grand Hotel has been built in the center of Riccione on two areas. The first is where once stood the hospice Amato-Martinelli built in 1877. It was the first hospice erected in Riccione turned to the care of children affected with scrofula.
The second area is where Villa Martinelli Solieri stood. Of this area the little residence of the guardian of the villa has remained and is now part of the park of the Grand Hotel.
The Grand Hotel is surrounded by a great gardenand had three tennis fields and a vast terrace.
The people who saw the 155 rooms furnished in sumptuous way, were so impressed to considere the Grand Hotel "the most grandiose and modern hotel of the coast Romagna" and it became soon one of the privileged meeting places of the fascist elite.

Few days after the inauguration on 15/08/1929, a great dance party was prepared for the Press with the participation of great personalities of politics, art and literature; Mr. Ceschina in this way he intended to attract a prestigious clientele that preferred to spend the vacation in the private villas up to that moment.
Beacause the success of the Grand Hotel after a few years it was necessary to build a dependence called "Tower of the Grand Hotel" and one year later the hotel almost doubled with the addition of the East wing (the façade toward the sea).
After the second world war the Grand Hotel became for a period the command of the allied troops in middle italy. In the sixties an Olympic swimming pool was added to the hotel.