The Rotonda a Mare stands on the shoreline at Senigallia in Le Marche. It was built between the Wars and was instrumental in the development of Senigallia as a popular tourist resort in the 1930s…
The story of Senigallia’s ‘circular pier’ dates to the latter half of the 19th century, when a structure on wooden stilts was built in front of the town’s bathing facilities, just a few hundred metres up the coast from here. Wood, however, is not always the most durable of materials in salt water and the present structure, which was inaugurated in 1933, is an altogether more permanent proposition.
It served as a munitions dump during WWII, but then fell into disrepair and was closed in the 1980s. It reopened after restoration in 2006 and is now returned to its function as a place of leisure, the arts and business.