The Fortress of San Leo, also known as the fortress of San Leo is located in the province of Rimini. Located at the highest point of a rocky peak bordered by imposing vertical walls, the fortress represents the main architectural emergence of the entire village of San Leo. The origins of the fortified town are certainly pre-Christian, even if the first documented news of a real settlement is linked to the presence of the saint Leo between the 4th and 5th centuries. The remarkable strategic position made San Leo a disputed place throughout the early Middle Ages: from the Goths to the Byzantines, passing through the Lombards (Desiderio built the first defensive garrison in masonry) up to the domination of the Church, attested from the mid-eighth to a good part of the 10th century. Used for a long time as a prison - the story of the Count of Cagliostro, imprisoned here between 1791 and 1795 is very well known - the fortress will finally be used as a military barracks until 1915. Today the fortress, cleaned of the nineteenth-century superstructures that have altered its Renaissance lines, has returned to its architectural splendor which makes it one of the most celebrated testimonies of military art, in a setting of history and art among the most beautiful in Italy.