It is at the beginning of the 1930s when Donna Rachele Mussolini decides to buy a villa in Riccione to spend there summer holidays. From this moment onwards, the events of a Fascist regime entwine inseparably with those of a “Green Pear of Adriatic”. This is a turning point decisive for a development of the city’s hospitality.
Wheather we like it or not, in those years Riccione became one of the most important seaside resorts in Italy, and it is in this period, when the biggest national and international authorities of the political and cultural scene were taking walks along the Ceccarini Street.

The truth is, that Mussolini looked for a beach where he would have been able to practice his chieftan appeal and found Riccione an ideal place for this aim.

Corriere della Sera from October 7th, 1938 wrote: “Often egoistic and unimagimative tourism of few priviliged, Fascism and Nazism, on a precise resolve of Duce and Führer, have substituted with a prolific encounters with labour masses”.

But the dubious slogan with a Fascist counterfoil asks for a question: “Mussolini indeed met Riccioners at the time?” It seems yes, at least this is what can be found in a collective memory of a country that smiled friendly at Duce trying to eat a broth with fish catched by lifeguard Nicola Corazza, or a land that that remembers proud and wild leader that volunteered to be a referee in a “dive on fish” competition.

In this very moment a name of Riccione, until then unknown, makes a European trip: it is a holiday spot of one of the first personas of the Italian and European political scene and a theatre of famous meetings like the one with Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss, welcomed by “Duce”.
It was also during a stay at Riccione, when Mussolini hears, receiving a phonecall from Vienna, about the disappearance of his dear friend in an assassination attempt, and other times when this small country at the Adriatic coast is in the background of entire nation's dramatic events. This way, year after year, up until final control of Fascist regime, Riccione’s curtain rises in summer and Green Pearl of Adriatic becomes a portrait of cheerful and carefree world.

Picture postcards, illustrated journals, published manifestations and filmed sequences of this period clearly had a principal role in making a symbol of holidays out of Riccione. It is exactly because of the circulation of those immages, that a Green Pearl of Adriatic did the European tour.
An instrument of the Fascist propaganda becomes in its own time a complimentary advertisement of the whole Riviera and Mussolini employs a role of “Testimonial ” in Riccione.

But when the image of Romagnan coast’s hospitality is concerned, an important tribute has to be paid to Donna Rachele and other members of the Duce’s circle. For the observers of the times, photographies of Vittorio and Romano playing on the beach are the occasions to immortalize the Mussolini family, at the same time contributing in overdrawing of Riccione’s picture. For what Donna Rachele is concerned, she was present on charity operas , took care of many affairs, like frequent visits of the greatest hierarchs of the times.
It is her who decides to purchase for herself and her family a summer holiday residence and it is also her to promote the Riccione’s lidos as holiday spots. And although on the one hand it seems just to acredit the lucky start of green pearl to the 1920s Mussolinian propaganda, on the other it would be generalizing to attribute all the luck to a purely political phenomenon.

July 25th, 1934, is a point at which ends a holiday relationship the family of Mussolini had with Riccione, but this certainly does not determine an end to the tourism in this small town of Adriatic Riviera. Thanks to one of the most representative men of 1930s Riccione launched its image all over the world: the bases were laid, now it is about the spirit of initiative of govering class and the local entrepreneurial does the rest.