In the second half of 1800s Riccione was an agricultural poor society. Fishery was a camplementary activity carried out by a coastal population. Tourism and beach activity had not seen their dawn yet. With regard to this poverty and backwardness, a word has to be said about Mr and Mrs Ceccarini , Giovanni and Maria Boorman Wheeler.

Sensitive on Riccione’s community needs, they come up with many initiatives of welfare and healthcare projects. They started together. After Giovanni, a doctor, died, he left a widow Maria, an American, to follow and continue the way they had chosen together. Firstly, she patronized a Labour Society of Mutual Help and than promoted an everyday distribution of meals to the poorest families.

In 1891, she inaugurated first children’s nursery school, that took care of kids from Riccione. A fee was commensurate to families’ economical conditions and the pedagogical startup was vanguard, based on the child’s personal development criterium, and not focused solely on the provision of help for parents.

A year after Maria Boorman laid a first stone under the ”Ceccarini’s hospital”, where the poor ill lived complimentarily while being treated. It was an iniziative of a great relevance in the epoche, where a single hospital of a region was in Rimini and cured only people from the city.

Also she should be owned for Riccione’s harbour realisation , what she considered a neccessary part of the capital, then urging a construction of an access road on her account. At her death-bed she decides that a hospital should be founded a charity Agency and dedicated her patrimony to guarantee an economic self- sufficiency of the healthcare structure.