Discover Marche

Introduction

Marche is the only Italian region with a plural name — historically "the Marches", a set of frontier territories on the edge of the Papal States — and it still reads as several places rather than one.

The structure is unusually regular. The Apennines run down the western side, and a series of roughly parallel river valleys drop east from them to 180 km of Adriatic coast. Each valley held its own town, its own dialect and often its own ruler, which is why a region of 1.5 million people contains Urbino, Ascoli Piceno, Macerata, Fermo and Pesaro, none of them a suburb of the others.

It is the least-visited part of central Italy relative to what it holds. Urbino's ducal palace was the model for the Renaissance ideal of the courtly state, Raphael and Bramante were both born here, and the Frasassi caves are among the largest accessible cave systems in Europe.

Geography

Marche is built like a comb: the Apennines along the west, and a row of near-parallel river valleys running east to the Adriatic. Almost nothing in the region is flat, and travel across the grain is slower than the map suggests.

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History

The region's name means frontier: these were the marches of the Papal States, a set of border territories that were never unified under one ruler. That fragmentation is why Marche has five historic capitals and no single one.

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Culture

Marche's culture is courtly at Urbino, operatic at Pesaro and Macerata, and industrious everywhere else — a region that produced Raphael, Rossini and Leopardi, and also most of the world's accordions.

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Climate Patterns

Mild and Mediterranean on the coast, continental in the valleys, and alpine in character on the Sibillini. The three can be experienced within an hour's drive of each other.

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Food & Traditional Cuisine

Marche cooks differently on each side of itself: Adriatic fish stews and wild mussels on the coast, layered baked pasta and pit-aged cheese inland — and a stuffed fried olive that has become the region's calling card.

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