Images of cinema and photography, but also the graphics of posters and magazines, that tell the story of the city of beach resorts, of the world wars, the collusions and breaks with traditional society, the dreams of the American way of life, the mass tourism. A city culture that until the 50s tried to coexist modernity and cosmopolitanism. An ancient, centuries-old world that broke into the new world of the coast, a city divided in two (the sea and the centre, summer and winter) in creative tension towards a single identity.
The twentieth century is the cinema, and therefore Fellini, which brings the image of the city to the world. Not only. Fellini, together with the Santarcangelo poet Tonino Guerra, from whose collaboration Amarcord was born, give poetic, therefore "universal" expression to the city of villages. Up to the new narratives of the eighties (Tondelli), which give voice to the transition of the city into post-modernity, to the contrast between day and night, to the transformation of the Riviera into a hyper-place. The unequivocal signs of what will be called the "district of pleasure". To then close the century (and the story), emblematically, with the arrival of the Rex worldwide in the images of the New Year 2000.