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A
little-known provincial capital surrounded by Marche's
loveliest
countryside, MACERATA is one of the region's liveliest
historical
towns, thanks to its ancient university. Easy-paced
and unpretentious, it's an ideal place to wind down
in the evenings after exploring the province.
For opera and ballet fans, its annual Stagione Lirica,
held in Italy's
best open-air venue outside Verona, is a must: in
recent years it has drawn such heavyweights as Placido
Domingo, Birgit Nilsson and José Carreras.
And if you're the slightest bit interested in contemporary
art, Macerata has a gallery that alone is reason enough
for visiting the town.
Piazza
della Libertà is the heart of the old town,
an odd square in
which the disparate buildings vie for supremacy. The
Renaissance Loggia dei Mercanti was supplied by Alessandro
Farnese, better known as Pope Paul III, the instigator
of many architectural improvements to sixteenth-century
Rome; sadly he did nothing else for the square, and
the loggia is elbowed out by the bland Palazzo del
Comune and overlooked by the dull Torre del Comune
. The dreariest feature, however, is the mournful
brick facade of San Paolo, a deconsecrated seventeenth-century
church now used as an exhibition space.
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SFERISTERIO - OPEN AIR OPERA |
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Location:
Piazza Nazario Sauro.
TEL. 0733/230735
CAN
BE VISITED DAILY - VISIT THE TICKET OFFICE
Destinato al "gioco del pallone al bracciale",
lo sferisterio was constructed between the years 1820-29
to the designs of Ireneo Aleandri and is one of
the most highly renowned neoclassic structures in
Italy.
Within
the spacious columned semi-circle there are 104 divided
stage boxes, and between the arena and the boxes 7000
spectators can be seated for the anual event of Opera
Lirica held every summer.
CLICK
HERE TO SEE MORE OPERA EVENTS
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WHICH RUINS IN MACERATA |
In
the frazione Villa Potenza, about 6 km from the city centre'.
TEL. 071/2074829
FREE
ENTRY
Remains of antique Roman Columns.The archeologivcal Zone
extends along il Potenza to the north east. Within Villa
Potenza some theatre remains are visible from the II CENTURY
AD.
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| MACERATA
DUOMO - CATHEDRAL |
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Location:
MACERATA
Piazza S. Vincenzo Strambi.
To
visit some works of art of the Sagrestie rivolgersi al sagrestano.
Nella Sagrestia comune e nella Sagrestia dei Canonici some
precious paintings are conserved.
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MUSEO
TIPOLOGICO DEL PRESEPIO
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Location:
MACERATA
VIA MAFFEO PANTALEONI, 4
TEL.0733/234035.
TIMETABLE
: Can be visited on request - private property.
ENTRANCE
: free
The
collection consits of over 150 "presepi" both
foreign and regional; 3000 examples.
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PALAZZO
BONACCORSI
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Via
Don Minzoni.
To
visit you must contact the owner.
Built
in the 7th century, Palazzo Boconarsi is decorated with
statues, al frescoes painted at the famous art schools of
napoletana e bolognese.
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WHICH RUINS IN MACERATA |
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MUSEO
MARCHIGIANO DEL RISORGIMENTO E DELLA RESISTENZA
Location:
MACERATA
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, 6.
TEL.0733/256361
ORARIO:
PER LE VISITE TELEFONARE
Raccolta di documenti, cimeli e importanti autografi di
Garibaldi,
Mazzini,
Napoleone, Pio IX e altri. Armi, divise, monete, manifesti.
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WHICH RUINS IN MACERATA |
MUSEO DELLA CARROZZA
Location:
MACERATA
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, 6.
TEL.0733/256361
ORARIO:
9,00 - 13,00 - CHIUSO IL LUNEDI' MATTINA.
Vi sono ordinati esemplari di carrozze di vario tipo e di
varie epoche.
Ha
sede nell'ex-collegio dei Gesuiti.
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WHICH RUINS IN MACERATA |
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MUSEO
CIVICO E PINACOTECA COMUNALE
Location:
MACERATA
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, 6.
TEL.0733/256361.
ORARIO:
9,00-13,00 E 16,00-19,30. CHIUSO DOMENICA POMERIGGIO E LUNEDI
INGRESSO: GRATUITO.
Comprende una sezione archeologica con oggetti preistorici,
antichita'
picene e romane, una raccolta numismatica, una raccolta
di fotografie e
oggetti vari riguardanti Macerata e i costumi e le usanze
dei suoi
cittadini
attraverso i tempi; una documentazione dell'attivita' musicale
svolta
in
citta' dal 1645 ad oggi; inoltre un'interessante raccolta
di mortaretti
in
bronzo del XVI secolo. La sezione di Arte antica annovera
dipinti di
scuola
fiamminga, napoletana e veneta, tra i quali una "Madonna
col Bambino"
di
Carlo Crivelli. Nella sezione di arte contemporanea sono
esposte opere
di
notevole pregio.
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MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIA
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Location:
MACERATA
Piazza S. Vincenzo Strambi.
Per
il Tesoro rivolgersi in Sagrestia.
Il santuario-basilica, di origine quattrocentesca, e' in
gran parte
opera
del Settecento, tra l'altro di Luigi Vanvitelli. In Sagrestia:
Tesoro,
ex
voto, dipinti e stampe.
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THE
ROAD SOUTH OF MACERATA
With the Sibillini mountains on the horizon, snow-capped for most
of
the year, the route south from Macerata towards Sarnano ranks
as one of the Marche's most beautiful. Ten kilometres along the
road, on the edge of
a dense wood, is the Romanesque-Gothic complex of the Abbazia
di Fiastra
(July to mid-Sept daily 10am-12.30pm & 3-6.30pm; Sun and rest
of year closes one hour earlier; L5000/2.58 for abbey and museum)
a Cistercian abbey with a simple, pan-tiled brick cloister and
monastic quarters adjoining a grandiose aisled church containing
fifteenth-century frescoes of the Crucifixion with St Benedict
and St Bernard. The abbey complex is a popular day out with locals
and you'll see a steady stream of visitors looking round the abbey
and its grounds, now a nature reserve. The abbey is still lived
in and occasionally monks can be seen flitting across the cloister
in their
white hooded robes.
Other
buildings in the complex include the eighteenth-century Palazzo
Giustiniani-Bandini , where Wagner once stayed and whose wedding-cake
facade was modelled on Buckingham Palace. The trails through the
woods are a popular Sunday stroll, and you should take time to
see the Museo della
Civiltà Contadina (July 23 to August 27 daily 10.30am-12.30pm
&
3.30-7pm;
April
to mid-October Sundays and national holidays 10.30am-12.30pm &
3.30-7pm; included in abbey ticket), a folk museum laid out in
the
abbey's low-vaulted outhouses. Among the agricultural and weaving
equipment is a decorated wagon such as most farming families would
have owned right up until the middle of the twentieth century,
using it as a manure cart, a wedding carriage, or whatever form
of transport was needed. For some insight into the economics of
marriage, take a look at the dowry lists, itemizing the value
of household goods. There's also a small archeological museum,
visitable on the same ticket, containing finds from the nearby
Roman town of Urbisaglia.
A
five-minute bus ride away, the site of Urbisaglia (April-Sept
Mon-Wed
& Sun 9.30am-1.30pm, Thurs-Sat 9.30am-1.30pm & 2.30-7.30pm;
Oct-Mar Mon-Sat 9.30am-1.30pm; free; tour guides can be booked
on tel 0733.506.566), or Urbs Salvia, was one of the Marche's
most important Roman towns until it was sacked by Alaric in 409
AD. Its fame continued into the Middle Ages, when Dante invoked
it as an example of a city fallen from glory in his
Paradiso .So far an amphitheatre, theatre, baths and parts of
the walls have been excavated, and frescoes of hunting scenes
have been discovered in an
underpassage.
South
of Urbisaglia, the hill-town health resort of SAN GINESIO is
justifiably known as the balcony of the Sibillini: the panoramic
view
from the gardens of the Colle Ascarano, just outside the town
walls,
stretches from the Adriatic and Monte Cónero to the Sibillini
mountains and the highest of the Apennines, the Gran Sasso in
Abruzzo. There's a fair
amount to see in the town itself: its central piazza is dominated
by one of
the Marche's most unusual churches, the Collegiata della Annunziata
, whose
late-Gothic facade is decorated with filigree-like terracotta
moulding.
Rising above it are two campaniles, one capped by an onion dome
and the
other by what looks like a manicured cactus. Gothic frescoes adorn
some
of the chapels, and the crypt has frescoes by the Salimbeni brothers
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including a pietà in which Mary looks completely demented
and Christ is
so covered with nail-holes that he appears to have chicken pox.
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