The cathedral on the Colle Guasco
Ancona, the capital of the Marche, is a port city founded by Greeks from Syracuse in the fourth century BC, on a promontory shaped like an elbow, in Greek "ankon", from which it takes its name, the only place on the Adriatic coast of Italy where the sun both rises and sets over the sea. Its harbour, one of the most important in the Adriatic, with ferries to Croatia, Greece and Albania, has been the heart of the city for over two thousand years, and at its entrance stands the Arch of Trajan, a slender marble triumphal arch built in 115 AD in honour of the emperor who had enlarged the port, attributed to the architect Apollodorus of Damascus.
On the top of the Colle Guasco, the hill that dominates the port and the city, where the acropolis of the Greek city stood, rises the Cathedral of San Ciriaco, one of the most interesting medieval churches in Italy, built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries on the site of a temple of Venus. It combines Romanesque and Byzantine elements, with a Greek cross plan, a twelve-sided dome, one of the oldest in Italy, and a Gothic porch supported by columns resting on two red marble lions. Inside, the crypt preserves the relics of Saint Cyriacus, patron of the city. From the square in front of the cathedral, the view sweeps over the port, the city and the sea. Other places to see are the Mole Vanvitelliana, a pentagonal building on an artificial island built in 1733 by Luigi Vanvitelli as a quarantine station, now an exhibition centre, and the Passetto, with its staircase to the sea and the fishermen's caves dug into the cliff.
Tip: climb to San Ciriaco at sunset for the view of the port; go down to the Passetto to swim from the rocks in summer.
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