Le Marche — "the Marches" in English, the only Italian region whose name is properly plural — is a quiet, rolling region on the Adriatic side of central Italy, bordered by Umbria to the west, Emilia-Romagna to the north, and Abruzzo to the south. It is roughly the shape of Tuscany flipped onto its opposite coast, and shares much of Tuscany's gentle landscape of hill towns, vineyards, and dense medieval history — without any of the crowds. Almost none of the international tourism that swamps Florence, Siena, and Venice in summer reaches this side of the Apennines, which is both the region's great disadvantage (the trains are slower, the English-language information is thinner) and the main reason to visit.
The region's star city is Urbino — a UNESCO World Heritage town in the northern hills, the home city of Raphael, and the seat of the 15th-century Duke Federico da Montefeltro, whose Ducal Palace is one of the finest surviving buildings of the Italian Renaissance. The gallery inside holds Piero della Francesca's mysterious Flagellation of Christ, widely considered one of the most important paintings in Italy. Ancona, the regional capital, is an old port founded by Greek colonists from Syracuse in the 4th century BCE and is the main ferry gateway to Croatia and Greece. Ascoli Piceno in the south is a breathtaking travertine-paved town built almost entirely of pale stone, famous for its central Piazza del Popolo — one of the loveliest squares in Italy — and its olive all'ascolana (stuffed, breaded and fried olives). Pesaro, the birthplace of Rossini, holds an annual opera festival in his name.
Beyond the towns, the Marche coast has a handful of good beaches — the dramatic limestone cliffs and coves of the Riviera del Conero south of Ancona are the most striking. Inland, the Sibillini mountains (shared with Umbria) offer walking country, the extraordinary blue-green Lago di Pilato, and the small medieval villages that cluster in the foothills. The food is excellent — vincisgrassi (a rich baked pasta), brodetto fish stew, and Verdicchio white wine — and much cheaper than anything comparable in Tuscany or Umbria.
