The Coastal and Hilltop Towns of Le Marche
THE COASTAL AND HILLTOP TOWNS OF LE MARCHE Always changing the coastal landscape of the Marche appears, in its shapes and colours, from Gabicce Mare to San Benedetto del Tronto, and so able to amaze it is, with its white cliffs drop- ping into the blue of the Adriatic Sea, with the deep green of the smooth hills dotted with old villages, and the ochre of the so long sandy shores. Likewise, in synch with the variety of the landscape, the urban structure of those many cities overlooking the sea changes as well: it is not about their being more or less ancient, since here history lives everywhere and they all share Greek, Roman, Picene or early-medieval origins, but it is a different distribu- tion of spaces that favoured, territory permitting, a double func- tion, the defence and the trade one. So it may happen to spot out in many villages of the coast an “upper village”, well protected by the walls of a castle high up on a hill and first living settlement, and the “seacoast”, the flat area lying along the shore, only later used for living and com- mercial purpose. This kind of composition pattern is typical of the medieval “castra” of Gabicce Monte (the ancient “Castellum Ligabitii”), Casteldimezzo and Fiorenzuola di Focara, in the province of Pesaro-Urbino, as well as those of Falconara Alta, north of Ancona and, south, of Sirolo and Numana, ancient walled cities, whose origins are lost in the mists of time; differ- ent are Recanati, Potenza Picena and Sant’Elpidio a Mare, important towns, fairly far from the sea, whose seacoasts, first simple coast moorings, then began the major towns of Porto Recanati, Porto Potenza Picena and Porto Sant’Elpidio.
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