Marche Region Guide

Marche offers what visitors go to Tuscany and Umbria for, with markedly fewer people and lower prices.

• Urbino. A hill town that was, for a few decades in the 15th century, one of the most sophisticated courts in Europe. The Palazzo Ducale holds Piero della Francesca's Flagellation and Raphael's La Muta; the whole centre has been UNESCO-listed since 1998.
• Coast and mountains within an hour. The Conero promontory is the only real cliff coast on the central Adriatic, and the Sibillini rise to 2,476 m less than 100 km inland.
• The Frasassi caves. A karst system of enormous chambers — the Abisso Ancona could hold Milan Cathedral — discovered in 1971 and open on guided routes.
• Opera in unusual buildings. Macerata's Sferisterio is a 19th-century ball-game arena turned open-air opera house with exceptional acoustics; Pesaro runs the Rossini Opera Festival in the composer's birthplace.
• Food that has not been exported.Olive all'ascolana, vincisgrassi, ciauscolo and the Adriatic brodetto are barely known outside the region.

What it is not: quick to cross laterally. The valleys run east-west, so moving north-south inland means repeatedly climbing out of one and down into the next.

The region's geography makes the practical choice simple: follow a valley, or follow the coast.

Urbino and the north

Urbino deserves a full day and is better stayed in than day-tripped — it empties in the evening and the light on the palace is worth being there for. Nearby, Gradara's castle is tied to the Paolo and Francesca episode in Dante, and Pesaro and Fano sit on the coast below.

The Conero and Ancona

Ancona is a working port with a Greek foundation and a Roman arch on the quay. Just south, the Monte Conero promontory drops in white cliffs to beaches — Portonovo, Mezzavalle, Due Sorelle, the last reachable only by boat.

The central valleys

Inland from Ancona, the Esino valley leads to the Frasassi caves and the Gola della Rossa. Further south, Macerata, Recanati — Leopardi's town, and the source of his best-known poem's hill — and Loreto, whose basilica encloses a house held by tradition to be the Virgin's and is among Europe's major pilgrimage sites.

The south

Ascoli Piceno is built almost entirely in travertine, and its Piazza del Popolo is one of the finest squares in Italy. It is also the home of the stuffed fried olive. West of it the Monti Sibillini begin.

How long: five days covers Urbino, the Conero and one inland valley. A week adds the south.

Marche has little of the visitor pressure that affects its neighbours, and its difficulties are structural rather than touristic.

Earthquake recovery

The 2016 central Italy earthquakes hit the southern Marche hard, particularly the villages around the Sibillini. Reconstruction continues, some centres remain partly closed, and several communities have lost population permanently. Visiting and spending inland is directly useful, and it is worth accepting that some churches and museums are still shut.

Seasonal concentration

The coast fills in July and August with largely Italian holidaymakers, and the Conero beaches in particular have limited access. Portonovo restricts vehicle access in high summer with a shuttle from Ancona, and beaches like Due Sorelle are reachable only by boat with limited daily places. June and September are warm, swimmable and far easier.

The Sibillini

A national park, with restrictions on camping, fires and leaving marked paths. Weather changes quickly and mountain rescue is chargeable.

Moscioli

The wild mussels of Portonovo are a Slow Food presidium, harvested by hand by a small number of licensed divers and only between roughly April and October. They are not farmed, and buying them in season from the Conero restaurants supports a fishery that could easily be lost.

Buying locally

Fabriano paper, Castelfidardo accordions, Offida lace and the shoe workshops of the Fermo district are all small-scale producers still operating where they always have.

Marche divides into a coast season and an inland season, and they only partly overlap.

• April-May. Excellent inland. Hill towns comfortable, Sibillini foothills green, Urbino at its best. The sea is still cold.
• June. The best all-round month: sea swimmable, coast not yet full, and inland still pleasant.
• July-August. Hot, 30-34 °C, with the coast busy and priced accordingly — though never on the scale of Romagna to the north. The festival season peaks: the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro and the Sferisterio Opera Festival at Macerata both run in these weeks, and Ascoli's Quintana joust is in early August.
• September-October. Strong. The sea stays warm into September, the heat breaks, and the grape and olive harvests run. Truffle season begins in the Acqualagna area, which holds a major fair in late October.
• November-March. Cool and damp on the coast, cold inland with snow in the Sibillini. Coastal resorts largely close; the art cities are open, empty and cheap. This is when the food is best — truffle, ciauscolo, new oil.

Relative cost index vs region average