On 31 October, thirty years ago, Federico Fellini dies. A state funeral is held in Rome and a funeral chamber is set up in Studio 5 at Cinecittà. The entire film world, from directors to extras, from actors to workers, paid homage to the artist that everyone in that immense 400 square metre shed called the ‘lighthouse’. On the evening of 3 November, Fellini made his final journey back to Rimini, where a second funeral chamber was set up in the column room of the Galli theatre. The next day, the city rallied around “that boy from Rimini whom the whole world will admire” as Sergio Zavoli said, in a packed Piazza Cavour, during the funeral oration.

Twenty thousand people from Rimini accompanied the coffin on its journey from Piazza Cavour to the cemetery, a swaying tide that continued to applaud and embrace “the Rimini boy who returned to the Borgo”, accompanying him step by step along his places of memory.

There are two obligatory stops for the procession before arriving at the cemetery, one in front of the Fulgor cinema where Fellini had discovered the seventh art as a child, and the other in that corner of the historic centre where the bridge fades into the Borgo.

Thirty years later, the city of Rimini pays tribute to the “universal dimension of that mourning” with an exhibition entitled “Rimini 1993-2023: Fellini’s funeral in the unpublished images of Marco Pesaresi”, curated by Mario Beltrambini and Jana Liskova and realised by the Municipality of Rimini in collaboration with the Municipality of Savignano sul Rubicone and the Savignano Immagini association.

The exhibition presents the 30 selected images – of the over 240 that make up the entire reportage – of Federico Fellini’s funeral taken by photographer Marco Pesaresi, who was present that day and was ready to recount through images the Maestro’s last visit to his Rimini. Images that have only recently come to light and that today allow even the youngest audience to appreciate the significance of Rimini’s farewell to the Maestro thirty years ago.