The travertine drawing room
At the confluence of the Tronto and Castellano rivers, surrounded by mountains, Ascoli Piceno is one of the most beautiful and least known art towns in central Italy, built almost entirely of travertine, a warm, pale stone that gives its streets, palaces and churches a luminous, harmonious appearance. Founded by the Picenes, then an important Roman town on the Via Salaria, of which it preserves bridges and gates, it was in the Middle Ages a rich free commune, known as the "city of a hundred towers" for the many tower houses of its noble families, some of which still rise above the roofs.
Its heart is the Piazza del Popolo, considered one of the most beautiful squares in Italy, the "drawing room" of the city: a large rectangular square paved with shiny travertine, surrounded by Renaissance arcades and loggias, overlooked by the thirteenth century Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo and by the side of the Gothic church of San Francesco, with its loggia of the merchants. On one side of the square is the historic Caffè Meletti, opened in 1907, with Art Nouveau interiors, where you can taste the famous anisetta Meletti, an aniseed liqueur created in the town, served with the "mosca", a coffee bean. A few steps away, the Piazza Arringo, the oldest square, with the cathedral of Sant'Emidio, the Baptistery and the Pinacoteca Civica, with works by Carlo Crivelli, Titian and Guido Reni. The town is a pleasure to explore on foot, among lanes, Romanesque churches, medieval houses and the Roman Ponte di Solestà.
Tip: have an anisetta at Caffè Meletti in Piazza del Popolo; in the evening the travertine glows with the lights of the square.
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