Rocca delle Caminate

A hill in the comune of Meldola, 356 metres up in the province of Forlì-Cesena, carried a fortification probably raised on a Roman work. The first records of the Castrum Caminate date from 997, when it answered to Ambrone delle Caminate.

By 1120 it belonged to the Belmonti, who rebelled against imperial authority and were forced to flee when Conrad came to destroy the castle; Guglielmo Belmonti rebuilt it the following year. The men of Forlì took and destroyed it in 1212, then rebuilt it themselves in 1213. Rinaldo Belmonte seized it back in 1235, and a further Forlivese expedition, joined by men of Faenza, took the rocca and levelled it once more. It was rebuilt in 1248.

In 1380 the castle was entrusted to Sinibaldo Ordelaffi, who had its fortifications improved. In 1387 Sinibaldo held out against an attack by Giovanni Ordelaffi, who meant to unseat his brother from the lordship of Forlì.

The Belmonti recovered it and lost it in 1395 to a siege by Francesco Ordelaffi. The commune of Forlì owned it in 1407 and lost it to the Malatesta, who ceded it in 1417 to Carlo di Montealboddo. Angelo della Pergola occupied the rocca in 1424 on the orders of the Visconti; by 1433 Antonio Ordelaffi is recorded as owner, and in 1435 he lost it to della Pergola again, this time hired directly by the Holy See. The papacy handed it to the Belmonti, who soon lost it to the Forlivesi, and in 1438 it fell to Roberto Malatesta, passing to Domenico Malatesta in 1441 and in 1468 to Pino III Ordelaffi, who had it razed to the ground.

The site came under French rule in 1494 and rebuilding was ordered; the Forlivesi held the new fortress until 1503, when Venice conquered it. Venetian rule suited none of the contending parties, and in 1508 the rocca passed for good to the Holy See, which entrusted it to the counts Pio di Carpi. The Aldobrandini held it at the end of the sixteenth century, then the Pamphili; by the late nineteenth century it was held in emphyteusis by the Baccarini of Forlì. Already abandoned, it was further damaged by the earthquake of 1870, after which only a few bastions and scattered ruins were left standing.

Between 1924 and 1927 a new building went up on the ruin in neo-medieval style, paid for by a prestito littorio, a subscription raised among the citizens of Romagna, and then donated to Benito Mussolini, who was born at Predappio some 11 km away and took the rocca as his summer residence. The interiors were the work of the designer Guido Malagola Cappi. On the rebuilt tower went a lighthouse throwing a tricolour beam of 8,000 candlepower, visible more than 60 km off, lit to show that the Duce was inside.

Mussolini composed the autograph first version of the Four-Power Pact here during a short stay in March 1933, and met dignitaries there during the Second World War, among them the Romanian foreign minister Mihai Antonescu. On 28 September 1943 he presided at the rocca over the first council of ministers of the Italian Social Republic, called to name the officers of the new republican fascist government. In that period the adjacent barracks, quarters of the guard detachment, was used for the torture of partisans; among them was Antonio Carini, known as Orsi, killed near the rocca on 13 March 1944. At the end of the war Allied troops searching for treasure partly destroyed the building, and local people carried off the furniture that remained.

Mussolini had sold the castle to his wife Rachele Guidi in 1932. In 1962 she sold it to the Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia, which found no use for it and put it back on the market; in 1971 the provincial administration of Forlì bought it for 48 million lire, both to protect a site of clear historical interest and to discourage exploitation of its symbolic value. Nothing was restored before 1982, and partial safeguarding works began only in the years that followed. The argument over its future closed after 2007, when European Union money for a research technology park, topped up by the province, funded a four-year restoration; completed in 2016, it opened the whole complex, intended as a seat for university research and business innovation.

The rocca belongs to the province of Forlì-Cesena and carries Italian national heritage designation. It hosts a yearly palio re-enacting the fighting between the Belmonti, Malatesta and Ordelaffi. In 2017 the local authority approved a proposal from the mayor of Meldola, Gian Luca Zattini, to turn part of the castle into a restaurant; critics objected that the place could become a pilgrimage point for modern fascists.