Family Coat of Arms
The
House of Malatesta was an Italian family that ruled over
Rimini from 1295 until 1500, as well as (in different periods) other lands and towns in
Romagna.
Malatesta da Verucchio (d. 1312), a
Guelph leader, became
podestà (chief magistrate) of Rimini in 1239 and made himself sole master of the city after the expulsion of the family's
Ghibelline rivals, the Parcitati, in 1295.
His hunchback son
Giovanni Malatesta is chiefly famous because of the 1285 tragedy, recorded in
Dante's Inferno, when he killed his wife
Francesca da Polenta and his younger brother Paolo, having discovered them in adultery.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Malatesta ruled over a number of cities in the Romagna and the
Marche, including
Pesaro,
Fano,
Cesena,
Fossombrone and
Cervia.
Several Malatesta were
condottieri at the service of various Italian states. The most famous was
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, who was engaged in conflict with the papacy over territorial claims. His grandson
Pandolfo was eventually expelled from Rimini in 1500 by
Cesare Borgia and the city was finally incorporated in the Papal States in 1528, after the last failed attempt of Pandolfo's son,
Sigismondo.
See also
