A harbor town on Adriatic Sea in northern Italy. It originally belonged to the Umbro-Etruscan civilization and was occupied in 268 BC by the Romans. A Latin colony was established there and as the junction of the great Roman roads the Via Aemilia and the Via Flaminia, it became a Roman municipium. It was later sacked by the dictator Sulla. Rimini passed to the Byzantines and from them to the Goths, from whom it was recaptured by the Byzantine general Narses, and then to the Lombards and Franks. It has one of earliest Roman triumphal arches, built in 27 BC.