At the end of the XII century the city passed under the dominion of the Malatesta of Rimini, it was Lordship of the Malatesta until 1463 when the Duke of Montefeltro reconquered it for the Church. Under Napoleon it became part of the Italic kingdom and with the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it returned again to the Papal States. In September 1860, thanks to the forces of General Cialdini, it became part of the Kingdom of Italy.
Fano also owes the expansion of the city walls, the restoration of gates and bastions and the construction of the imposing Rocca Malatestiana to the Malatesti which, although undergoing adaptations and modifications, retained the original appearance of a large fortified rectangle, delimited by escarpments with robust corner towers and with the Keep built with the collaboration of the architect Matteo Nuti who rebuilt, after the end of the Malatesta domination, also Porta Maggiore with the adjacent Bastion (which bears his name). The space of this defensive work was from 1933 used as a public garden (i giardini Roma).
The tombs were transferred from the inside of the former Church of S. Francesco, now a monumental ruin with no roof, to the portico and reassembled them in 1659. As it appears today, the portico is however the result of a neo-Gothic reconstruction, completed in 1850 by engineer Filippo Bandini. The Tomb of Paola Bianca Malatesti who was the first wife of Pandolfo III is adorned with statuettes, shelves, hanging arches and twisted columns crowning the image of the deceased, lying on the lid of the very elaborate sarcophagus. It is an authentic masterpiece of Venetian imported late Gothic sculpture by Maestro Filippo di Domenico. More modest is the Tomb of Bonetto da Castelfranco, commissioned by Sigismondo Malatesti to house the remains of his loyal doctor. On the opposite side of the portal dominates the Renaissance Tomb of Pandolfo III Malatesti commissioned by his son Sigismondo who most likely entrusted the design to Leon Battista Alberti. During the recent restorations to which the entire monumental complex was subjected, the mummified body of Pandolfo III was unexpectedly found.
An ideal setting for musical and theatrical performances, since 1954 the Malatesta Court has been the seat during the summer of opera and prose performances, concerts and ballets, classical and modern operas based on rich and varied posters. From the architectural point of view, only the left side is Malatesta, with the large portico with slender stone columns (the capitals have the characteristic Malatesta rose with four petals) and the four beautiful mullioned windows in terracotta.
