Thirty underground rooms
On top of the Girfalco hill, a few kilometres from the Adriatic, Fermo is an elegant town of art, with a historic centre of palaces, churches and steep streets, which in Roman times was the colony of Firmum Picenum and later the capital of a vast territory. Its heart is the Piazza del Popolo, a long, elegant Renaissance square surrounded by arcades and palaces, including the Palazzo dei Priori, which houses the civic art gallery, with an early work by Rubens, the Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Biblioteca Civica Romolo Spezioli, whose Sala del Mappamondo preserves a huge eighteenth century globe, made in 1713, among shelves full of ancient books. At the top of the hill, on the Girfalco, stands the Cathedral, with a Gothic façade, and a park with a view over the sea and the Sibillini.
Under the streets of the centre lies Fermo's most surprising monument: the Roman cisterns, an enormous underground complex built in the first century AD to collect and purify the water for the town. It consists of thirty rooms, arranged in three rows of ten, connected by doors and covered by barrel vaults, with a total surface of over two thousand square metres, one of the largest and best preserved Roman hydraulic works in Italy. The water, filtered through the rooms, supplied the town's fountains and baths; the cisterns were used until the twentieth century. Walking through the silent, cool rooms, among the ancient walls of concrete and brick, is a fascinating experience. Fermo also has the Teatro dell'Aquila, one of the largest and most beautiful eighteenth century theatres in the Marche.
Tip: the cisterns are visited with a guided tour starting from the tourist office; combine them with the Sala del Mappamondo.
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