The Marche and San Marino

  • Letter from Italy

    Virtual museum tours: some of the best For professional guides in Italy this is, of course, a period in which they suddenly find themselves without work. However many museums, while closed to the public, have made it possible not only to consult their catalogues or browse the collections online but…

  • Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits

    Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits

    โ€œLorenzo Lotto. Portraitsโ€ is the title of an exhibition currently running at the National Gallery in London. It has come from the Prado in Madrid, in slightly slimmed-down form. Not all of the works on show in the Prado can be seen in London (the catalogue is teasingly tantalising in…

  • Seasonโ€™s Greetings

    Seasonโ€™s Greetings

    This Advent weโ€™ve chosen twelve different depictions of the Nativity, which we have discovered in the course of Blue Guides research trips around Italyโ€”plus one final one from our latest title in preparation. 1. The ox and the ass and the baby in the manger from an early Christian sarcophagus…

  • Silence of the looms

    Silence of the looms

    Sadly the looms of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows (Blue Guide The Marche) in Potenza Picena no longer weave their wonderful damask. ย Our author Ellen Grady investigatesย ยป

  • A Treasure in Cagli

    A Treasure in Cagli

    We were passing through Cagli and stopped there, drawn by the Blue Guide report of the La Gioconda which served us a wonderful lunch. It well deserves Ellen Gradyโ€™s accolade as โ€˜a fantastic little restaurant that will make you want to stay in Cagli foreverโ€™. Walking off our choices from…

  • Comments on Blue Guide The Marche & San Marino

    Comments on Blue Guide The Marche & San Marino

    A stunningly beautiful region of coast, hills and mountains. As well as the historic town of Urbino, birthplace of Raphael, the region encompasses the former maritime republic of Ancona, the sandy beaches of the Palm Riviera, the dramatic scenery of the Sibylline Mountains, and lesser-known places such as the marble-built…

  • Giacomo Leopardi: A poet in film

    Giacomo Leopardi: A poet in film

    Reviewed by Alta Macadam Il Giovane favoloso, a film released in Italy this autumn, describes the life of the country’s greatest Romantic poet (in fact its greatest poet, together with Dante and Petrarch). This undertaking, by director Mario Martone, was highly ambitious: Elio Germano as Leopardi re-enacts the life of…

  • Sassoferrato and the Aion Mosaic

    Sassoferrato and the Aion Mosaic

    “The name Sassoferrato derives from the Latin saxum ferratum, โ€˜stone encircled by ironโ€™; it stands on a rocky crest, in an area rich in iron ore. Close by, at the confluence of the Sentino and Marena rivers, stood the Roman city of Sentinum, where in 295 BC the Romans achieved…

  • Ideal cities are all around us. Itโ€™s simply a matter of perspective.

    Ideal cities are all around us. Itโ€™s simply a matter of perspective.

    Last time I bothered to update my mobile phone software, I found, included among the extra features, an option to take panorama shots with the phoneโ€™s camera. I experimented with this as I was walking to work, and came up with street views that instantly reminded me of Luciano Laurana.…

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