Themed picks · Rimini · Adriatic coast
10 Adriatic seaside towns near Rimini
Ten towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. In Rimini's center a square meter costs €2,100 to €3,400; here it starts at €850, in Comacchio.
10 comuni · within 120 minutes of Rimini · drive times by road from the city center
The Italian Adriatic coast from the Po Delta to the Conero promontory is the country's longest stretch of swimmable shore, almost entirely lined with seaside comuni that have been working as beach towns since the 1920s. Rimini sits roughly at its center and serves as both the most famous of them (the broad sand beach, the night life, the Fellini biographical connection) and the obvious base for day trips up and down the coast.
Two hours' drive from Rimini in either direction covers the working part of the riviera: north into Romagna (Cervia, Cesenatico, Ravenna's coastal frazioni, Comacchio in the Po delta), south into Marche (Gabicce, Pesaro, Senigallia, the Conero coast around Numana and Sirolo, Porto San Giorgio). Each stretch has a different character. Romagna is the broad-sand, family-resort tradition. Marche shifts to a more dramatic coastline as you head south, with the Monte Conero falling into the sea below Ancona.
We picked ten comuni that show the range, across both the Romagna and the Marche stretches. Drive times below are by road from the center of Rimini; most are also reachable by the regional rail line that runs the spine of the Adriatic coast (the Bologna-Ancona-Bari mainline calls at almost every seaside town).
The towns
1Pesaro e Urbino · Marche · 26 min from Rimini
Gabicce Mare
Best for a long lunch. Food guides list two tables here.
homes €2,450 to €3,400 a m² in the center · 5,436 people
The northernmost Marche seaside on the Adriatic, where the coast meets the cliffs of the Parco del San Bartolo at the Romagna border.
Northernmost Marche seaside, culturally part of the Riviera Romagnola continuum running up to Cervia, with a Bandiera Blu beach.
Carries the Bandiera Blu for certified swimmable water.
2Forlì-Cesena · Emilia-Romagna · 28 min from Rimini
Cesenatico
Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.
homes €2,900 to €4,000 a m² in the center · 26,060 people
An Adriatic fishing port whose canal was redrawn on commission from a Borgia patron, with ten historic sailboats moored as a floating museum.
The Porto Canale was redrawn by Leonardo da Vinci in 1502 on commission from Cesare Borgia, with his sketch preserved in the Codex L of the Institut de France.
3Pesaro e Urbino · Marche · 45 min from Rimini
Mondolfo
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
homes €1,050 to €1,400 a m² in the center · 14,416 people
A walled hill borgo at 144 meters above the Adriatic, with the frazione of Marotta and its beach below.
Late fifteenth-century walls and bastion redesigned by the Della Rovere for early artillery defense, roughly 600 meters around the hill borgo.
4Ravenna · Emilia-Romagna · 34 min from Rimini
Cervia
Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.
homes €3,700 to €5,900 a m² in the center · 28,957 people
The Adriatic salt town with 827 hectares of working saline, planned in 1697 around a grid of salt workers' houses.
Cervia's sale dolce, lower in bitter chlorides than other sea salts, harvested from 827 hectares of saline still in operation.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,900 a m².
5Pesaro e Urbino · Marche · 41 min from Rimini
Pesaro
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
homes €2,150 to €3,500 a m² in the center · 95,266 people
The Adriatic port at the mouth of the Foglia, founded as Roman Pisaurum in 184 BC and given to the world by Rossini in 1792.
Gioachino Rossini was born here in 1792; the Rossini Opera Festival each August and UNESCO's 2017 Creative City of Music designation both rest on his legacy.
6Ravenna · Emilia-Romagna · 58 min from Rimini
Ravenna
Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.
homes €1,700 to €2,350 a m² in the center · 156,340 people
A 4-meter coastal capital of three successive empires, with eight UNESCO mosaic monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Eight monuments from the fifth and sixth centuries inscribed in 1996, including San Vitale, Galla Placidia and Sant'Apollinare Nuovo.
7Ancona · Marche · 55 min from Rimini
Senigallia
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
homes €1,700 to €2,500 a m² in the center · 43,863 people
Thirteen kilometers of fine sand on the Adriatic, hometown to a chef and a photographer whose names carry beyond the region.
Thirteen kilometers of fine sand along the Adriatic, awarded Bandiera Blu, named for the velvet softness of the grain.
8Ascoli Piceno · Marche · 1 h 57 min from Rimini
Grottammare
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
homes €1,500 to €3,000 a m² in the center · 15,924 people
A double town on the Riviera delle Palme, with a palm-lined seafront and a medieval upper borgo where Pope Sixtus V was born.
Felice Peretti, born in the Paese Alto on 13 December 1521 and elected pope in 1585, rebuilt much of Rome and commissioned two churches in his birthplace.
The catch: It is the longest drive on this list: 1 h 57 min from Rimini.
9Ancona · Marche · 1 h 29 min from Rimini
Numana
Best for a long lunch. Food guides list four tables here.
homes €1,850 to €2,650 a m² in the center · 3,762 people
A Conero coastal town at 56 meters above its port, the Picene harbor that traded with Greek ships from the sixth century BC.
Sixth-century BC Picene royal burial with Attic pottery, bronze, ivory and amber, the central exhibit of the Antiquarium and proof of trade ties to Greece.
10Ferrara · Emilia-Romagna · 1 h 37 min from Rimini
Comacchio
Best for a soak. The comune has thermal baths.
homes €850 to €1,200 a m² in the center · 21,910 people
A canal town on thirteen islets, with brackish lagoons that hold three hundred bird species.
Eel has anchored the local economy since the Middle Ages; the Manifattura dei Marinati restored the seventeenth-century works where the catch was grilled and marinated.
We write about towns like these one town at a time, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Turin.
Why Rimini is the base
Rimini is the Adriatic's holiday-rail hub. The Centrale station handles 9 million passengers a year, with direct Frecciabianca service from Milan and Bologna in summer and dense regional connections up and down the coast year-round. The airport (RMI) handles charter and budget seasonal traffic. The city itself has a calmer side (the Tiberius Bridge, the Roman remains around Piazza Tre Martiri, the Fellini Museum at Castel Sismondo) for days that need a break from the beach.
When to go
June through mid-September is the working beach season; July and August are crowded but everything is open. May and late September are the shoulder months with the water still cool but the towns calmer. Avoid mid-August (Ferragosto). The off-season (November through March) thins the coast out almost entirely; some comuni close their seafront establishments. Ravenna and Comacchio stay open year-round because their pull is the basilicas and the Po Delta, not the beach.
Questions people ask
- What is the closest beach to Rimini?
- Rimini's own beach is the obvious answer (a 15-km stretch of broad sand, with the historic center 10 minutes' walk inland). For a quieter swim, Riccione (10 minutes south by car) and Cattolica (20 minutes) are the next two resort towns down the coast.
- Is the Conero coast worth visiting from Rimini?
- Yes. Sirolo and Numana sit below the Conero promontory about 90 minutes south of Rimini. The geography shifts: instead of broad sand, the coast becomes cliff and pebble beach with two bays (Le Due Sorelle) that are reachable only by boat. The food shifts too: brodetto alla anconitana, the local Adriatic fish stew, is at its base form here.
- Where is Italy's most famous seafood market?
- Cesenatico's fish market (Mercato Ittico, daily from 7am except Sunday) is the largest on the Romagna coast. The Leonardo da Vinci canal-port that runs through Cesenatico's center is the visual signature; the market is at the seaward end of it.
- Is there a quieter alternative to the Romagna resort beaches?
- The Po Delta. Comacchio, Lido di Volano, and the Valli di Comacchio lagoon system run north from the riviera and feel structurally different (canals, fishing huts on stilts, the eel market). Reachable in about 90 minutes from Rimini by car.
How we picked these · We took the 81 towns in our catalogue within two hours of Rimini by car, kept the 13 on the Adriatic shore, and ranked them by Bandiera Blu (the certified swimmable-water flag), Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione and UNESCO listing, and by how close they are. Comacchio always takes a place, for the Po delta. Gradara, the castle town behind Gabicce Mare, is left off because it sits inland. The radius is two hours rather than ninety minutes so the list reaches the Conero at Numana and the southern Marche coast at Grottammare.
