Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista (Suffragio)

San Giovanni Battista preserves a richly decorated interior: eighteenth-century stuccoes by Antonio Trentanove, an early altarpiece by Guido Cagnacci, and Cosimo Piazza's 1611 canvas holding one of the oldest painted views of the city.

Why it matters

The municipal register of historic places counts San Giovanni Battista among Rimini's oldest churches: documented from 1144, with monastic roots reaching back to the tenth century. Rebuilt by the Carmelites in the early Seicento and refashioned again in the Settecento, it packs a remarkable run of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting and stucco into a single nave, near the former Roman gateway.

What to notice

Inside, one nave lined with chapels is dressed in stucco led by Rimini-born Antonio Trentanove, alongside work by Bolognese master Giuseppe Mazza. In the first chapel on the left hangs Cagnacci's Santi Carmelitani of around 1630, an early work built around the ecstatic vision of Teresa of Avila; Andrea Boscoli's Predica del Battista, dated 1599, hangs further along. Cosimo Piazza's Trinity with the protectors of Rimini (1611) shows Saints Julian and Gaudenzio carrying a painted cityscape of remarkable early date. The Madonna del Carmine chapel pairs a 1772 Trentanove ancona with a sixteenth-century statue venerated here since 1573.

Context and history

The church passed to the Carmelites in 1573 and was rebuilt by the order in the early seventeenth century; after the suppression of 1797 it passed to the Capuchins. Its present form comes from the rebuilding of 1767–1772 designed by the Rimini architect Gaetano Cupioli, dates recorded over the portal, which created the spacious single-nave interior seen today on the line of the ancient via Flaminia.