| Senigallia
SENIGÁLLIA
is an unprepossessing family resort with a good beach
and with most of its tourist activity packed into
a short season. Primarily a
convenient place among locals for beach-lazing and
swimming, though not
special enough to travel any distance out of your
way for, the lido
part of town is cheerful enough in a low-key way in
July and August though empty outside this period.
The town centre focuses on the rickety Foro Annonario
,a semicircular Neoclassical marketplace, behind which
the imposing thirteenth-century Rocca Roveresca (May-Sept
Tues-Sat 9am-1pm & 5-10pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L4000/2.06),
built for Federico da Montefeltro's son-in-law by
Luciano Laurana, architect of the Palazzo Ducale in
Urbino, is worth an hour of your time. A somewhat
austere exterior is embellished by white stone brackets,
while inside airily elegant Renaissance halls stand
above an underground warren of vaulted storage rooms
and dungeons. It seems that the Rocca was rarely used
as a ducal residence - the fireplaces and beautiful
spiral staircase show little sign of use. The cells,
though, are a different matter: converted from cannon
positions when the region fell to the pope, they have
diminutive air-holes designed to inflict a slow and
agonizing death on their occupants. Fine views are
to be had from the towers, built in the fifteenth
century when the Adriatic coast was plagued by Turkish
bandits.
The
Rocca overlooks Senigállia's scruffy and dilapidated
sixteenth-century Palazzo Ducale , and the more interesting
Palazzo Baviera . Now the seat of the comune , it
still contains some original furniture and wall coverings,
and its ceilings - stuccoed with sixteenth-century
scenes from Greek mythology, Roman history and the
Old Testament - are, to say the least, sumptuous.
|
