The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Le Marche Between the Appenines and the Adriatic lies a heavenly slice of Italian life
WHAT do we look for in an Italian holiday? Beautiful beaches, amazing art and architecture, gem-like hilltop villages, magnificent wild mountains, interesting gardens, delicious food and drink? Le Marche, on the Adriatic side of Italy, have all these. Only one thing is lacking – tourists.
I was invited by Le Marche Segrete, an association of historic home owners, restaurateurs, artists and crafts people whose aim is to promote the region. Some of the members offer accommodation and after arriving at Ancona it was a direct drive along the motorway to the hill town of Fermo, where I was to stay with Countess Cecilia Romani Adami in her palazzo.
Her welcome was warm and after a maid carried my case into my large but not grandiose self-catering suite, Cecilia and her brother lost no time on taking me on a tour of their home. Palazzo Romani Adami rambles over five floors and has seven entrances plus a garden. It was formerly a “noble agricultural” palazzo, with the ground floor given over to the production of wine, flour and olive oil from the family’s country estates.
Later I set off up the hill in search of dinner. Fermo’s main square, the Piazza del Popolo, is edged by arcades beneath which I soon found the lively enoteca, Bar a Vin, which had been recommended to me. Here I met the mayor, Paolo Calcinaro, and after drinking a glass of the local verdicchio together, he left me in the good hands of the owner, Peppe Rossi, who regaled me with several courses starting with the local speciality olive ascolane – deep-fried olives stuffed with meats.
During the following days I enjoyed wandering around Fermo and grew to love it. I visited the 30 underground Roman cisterns (cold, damp, spooky). The library with the famous map room was closed (but has since reopened) but I did manage to visit the Teatro dell’Aquilla, built in the 1780s. I was intrigued as to why there are so many historic theatres in Le Marche. There had been an economic and cultural boom in the 1700s and almost every town wanted its own theatre. Many started life in a room in a palazzo but were later taken over by the commune.
I was entranced by the Teatro Flora at Penna San Giovanni, which is like a tiny Baroque opera house. Seating just 99, it is an extravaganza of decoration with a painted ceiling by Antonio Liozzi depicting a dancing muse surrounded with winged cherubs, flowers and fluttering ribbons.
One evening Cecilia and I took a trip out to the medieval seaside village of Torre di Palma where we dined at Lu Focaro, eating tempura of zucchini flowers and tartare of beef followed by superb pasta and a pistachio semi-freddo. From our table on the Belvedere Terrace we had an unrivalled view over the sea. To watch the changing light as the sun set and hear the wheeling swifts gradually fall silent was a joy.
Exploring the small marchigiani hilltowns that rise above fields of sunflowers and golden corn revealed some spectacular artistic treasures, many from the quattrocento, a period I love. In the church of Monte San Martino I saw paintings by Girolamo di Giovanni and the Venetian Crivelli brothers, Carlo and Vittore. They are in the form of polyptychs, a series of panels painted on wood within decorative frames originally destined to be altarpieces. They depict the Madonna with baby
Jesus in the centre surrounded by saints but within them you also find intriguing symbolic items: apples mean original sin; peaches, the trinity; pearls, purity; a robin, the blood of Christ, and so on. In the case of Carlo Crivelli especially, the faces too are magnificently expressive and real.
PERHAPS the most famous poet in Italy, after Dante, is Giacomo Leopardi, a rather tragic figure disabled by various illnesses who, like Keats, died quite young. I was eager to visit Casa Leopardi at Recanti for which I enlisted the services of Leonardo Colonnella, chauffeur for the comprehensively-named Euro Full Service di Ragusa Enrico, to drive me.
On the way we passed near the town of Macerata, where Bonnie Prince Charlie and Princess Louise were married in 1772.