When at the beginning of 1901 Sebastiano Amati opened the first hotel in Riccione known today as the Adriatic Pearl, it was nothing else than a small suburb with big ambitions. That poor suburb started to lose its structure and orient itself towards the sea and spread out roots for a new urban and economical structure based on a tourist economy. It was the duke Benito Mussolini who transformed Riccione into an icon of “elite-tourism”, when he chose the city as the destination of his propaganda summer swims. Mussolini’s summer residence was the villa of Giulia Galli Barnabei, bought by Rachele Mussolini in 1934 and totally renovated six years later in order to give way to a private tennis court and to an effective guard-house. In the films of Instituto Luce, Benito Mussolini is frequently seen wearing a swimsuit on the beach, during his swims or near a seaplane. It is thanks to him that Riccione and its beaches became familiar to thousands of Italians and constitutes the backdrop of important political events, as for example the meeting with the Austrian chancellor Dolfuss in August 1933, who was murdered the following year while his family was on holiday in Riccione.