RIMINI will always be a special place for me because it is where I first saw my father. My parents divorced when I was a baby and I had no contact with him until I was a teenager.

When I was 12 my mother and I drove from England to Rimini beach. Among the crowds, the ice-cream sellers and the plastic sun-loungers, my father and I were reunited.

Although I was impressed with my first sighting of a palm tree, even as a teenager I could tell that Rimini in the late 1970s was not especially glamorous. The sandy beach was long and wide, but the various beach stations were gaudy and indistinguishable.

The city was destroyed during the war and then rebuilt. It was Mussolini who first brought the masses to the beaches when he built the railway line.

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For much of the 1970s and 1980s Rimini was the Italian equivalent of Margate. But now the city is undergoing a revival. There are new trendy boutique hotels, the clubs are less tacky, and people don't snigger when you mention that you are going there.

When I returned to Rimini recently I found a much-improved and much-changed city. The Old Town has been revamped; much has been pedestrianised and the cobbled streets and squares are filled with elegant shops. When I first went, there were few nice places to stay. If you were rich, you stayed at the Grand Hotel. This was immortalised by Frederico Fellini in his film Amarcord.

Now there are almost 1,500 hotels in Rimini, including the trendy Duomo Hotel, which is well worth a visit, especially if you like a reception desk that looks like a giant silver life-belt. The Hotel Le Meridien was designed to resemble an ocean liner by the architect Paolo Portoghesi and is a favourite among chic Italians.

But some traditions live on. Rimini has been famous for its nightclubs for decades. About 25 years ago, I spotted Maradona on the dancefloor at Il Paradiso. When I was a teenager, Il Paradiso was the place to be seen - with or without a footballer. It still exists and the view from there is outstanding.

I remember rolling in from Il Paradiso at five in the morning and my grandmother being scandalised. “That's the time people get up to open their stalls in the market,” she told me. And rather conveniently, if you are a little peckish on your way down the hill from the club, you can pop into the vast covered market for a bit of bread with ham or cheese.

If you happen to find yourself in the covered market, start with the general foods, fruit and vegetable section (where you can stock up on prime-grade parmesan for a fraction of the price you will pay back home) and then move on to the fish and seafood section. Here you will see things you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night, let alone eat. One local delicacy is a small see-through crustacean called canocchia. When you eat them think of Fellini, Italy's most celebrated film director, who was born and grew up in Rimini and was nicknamed canocchia because he was so thin.

The city had a difficult relationship with its most famous citizen. When his film La Dolce Vita came out, local priests and residents demonstrated outside the duomo, one of Italy's most famous churches, with large painted signs. “We will pray for the sinner Federico Fellini” they had written on them. Among the protesters were Fellini's own mother and my grandmother.

Whatever else you do in Rimini, try to eat as much as possible. If you like seafood, you won't need to go to a nightclub to find paradise, just head for Lo Squero and the seafood risotto. Rimini has one restaurant with a Michelin star, the Acero Rosso, which takes its name from the three red maple trees in the garden. It is an ideal place to savour home-made pasta and plan your next visit.

And if you stay at Le Meridien, you can avoid the crowds that still frequent the beach by hanging out in the Dolce Vita Beach Club. If I were to meet my father on Rimini beach today, that's where I would choose.

Helena Frith Powell is the author of Ciao Bella - In Search of my Italian Father (Gibson Square, £7.99).

Need to know

Citalia (0871 6640253, www.citalia.com) offers seven nights' half board at the Grand Hotel in Rimini from £839pp.

The price includes BA flights from Gatwick and private transfers.

Further information
www.turismo.provincia.rimini.it

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