Malatesta

The House of Malatesta was an Italian dynasty ruling Rimini from 1295 to 1500 and holding Romagna and Marche cities. Progenitor Rodolfo of Carpegna earned the nickname mala testa, or bad head, for fierceness; the family settled in Rimini in the twelfth century, and Malatesta I became podestà in 1239. His son Malatesta da Verucchio turned Guelph in 1248 and expelled the rival Parcitadi in 1295 to rule alone.

In 1285 Giovanni Malatesta murdered his wife Francesca da Polenta and his brother Paolo on finding them together, a scene Dante placed in the Inferno. Later lords held Pesaro and Cesena, where Malatesta Novello built the Malatestiana Library in 1447—1452.

The family's most celebrated member, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, raised Rimini's Tempio Malatestiano from 1450 while fighting the papacy, but lost most of his lands, keeping Rimini only with Venetian support. Cesare Borgia expelled his grandson Pandolfo in 1500; after failed restoration Rimini passed to the Papal States in 1528, and later branches served as condottieri into the mid-eighteenth century.