Talented from Le Marche

Today, chapeau for Filippo Magnini for his gold medal in the 100m Free Style in Montreal. Thanks to Filippo, from Pesaro (see in the map on the website where Pesaro is), Italy has now finally its first gold medal on the score.

The other guy from Pesaro (well, Tavullia, actually, 20 minutes from Pesaro, just in front of the Castle of Gradara, and nt far away from San Marino), is the best motorcycle racer in the world, maybe ever (he'll be the best ever within a couple year, you bet it), that is Valentino Rossi. "Vale" is now living in London, since he wants to feel himself as a "citizen of the world", but in his free time, he takes a pleasant refugee in Tavullia, to meet his friends at the local bar.

Still thinking that Le Marche are so "unknown"? :-)

Fermo, the new province

Fermo, this beautiful town between the province of Macerata and Ascoli Piceno, is about to become a province itself. Historically, it's more than true that Fermo has always played alone, and experienced a period of "brightness" when Felice Peretti became Pope with the name of Sisto V (1585-1590). Afterwards, Fermo knew a very dark period under the State of the Church, and flourished over the last 30 years thanks to the ability of its inhabitants in making shoes. Montegranaro, Sant'Elpidio a Mare and Casette d'Ete draw the "triangle of the shoes", with factories of Tod's, Cesare Paciotti (in Civitanova), Laura Biagiotti, Docksteps, Silvano Mazza (Prada's designer), Roberto Botticelli simply next to each other.

That's why Fermo applied to become an independent province.

Fermo has a beautiful city centre. I wrote about it in Italian, there should be said a lot of things about it. What I want to show you, however, is this picture, taken from the washroom of the City Hall (a historical Palace just in the main square, Piazza del Popolo)!

If this is the view from a washroom, think how beautiful could be the view from the Piazza del Girfalco, the highest square of the town, where the cathedral is placed...

Life in Le Marche: Urbino

This picture portraits Urbino. Urbino is our masterpiece, so nice, so beautiful and so special that it might look unlike Le Marche. The point is that Urbino has been dominated by the Dukes of Montefeltro, whereas other towns of Le Marche didn't have such a big family based in the town. That's why Urbino has more things in common with Mantua, or Ferrara, than with - say - Ancona, Fermo or Ascoli Piceno. However, Urbino is felt as "our" town because of the university, which represents, together with Macerata, Ancona and Camerino, one of the four educational poles of Le Marche. Full of students, so many - compared to the population - that Urbino wouldn't suffer a comparison with Bologna or Padua as a university town. Which is the main reason why the young "marchigiani" consider Urbino one of the best towns of Le Marche!

I love you all!

Hi there!

Finally, I got my own DSL connection, to keep writing my blog again!
Last one and half month has been terrible, I felt like without an arm or something like that. I thought I was out of the world, but I also appreciated a lot of things that my web-addiction made me forget... :-)

I want to tell you that I love you all: last month, although I've almost never been online, I got a very encouraging average visitors number. It looks like my website sounds interesting for some of you... WOW!!!

Well, how can I compensate your fidelity?

From tomorrow on, I'll put online a picture from le Marche, telling you some small story about the place (not the story of the place, but something nice about it).

Goodnight, and thank you all again