The historic center of Ascoli Piceno is built almost entirely in travertine and is among the most admired in the region and central Italy, thanks to its artistic and architectural wealth. It preserves several noble and bell towers and for this reason it is called the City of a hundred towers.
WHAT TO VISITThe city has as its fulcrum the Renaissance Piazza del Popolo where there are some important buildings including the Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo, dating back to the 13th century and today the seat of the Municipality, the historic Art Nouveau-style Caffè Meletti and the Church of San Francesco, to which the Loggia dei Mercanti, an elegant construction of 1513, is leaning against it.
Another very elegant urban space is Piazza Arringo, the oldest square in Ascoli, where there are very interesting buildings: the medieval Baptistery of San Giovanni, the Cathedral of Sant’Emidio, which contains within it the crypt also dedicated to the patron saint and the large polyptych of Sant’Emidio by Carlo Crivelli, signed and dated 1473; the Palazzo Vescovile, the Palazzo dell’Arengo, seat of the Civic Art Gallery and some municipal offices.
On the opposite side of the square you can recognize the seventeenth-century facade of Palazzo Panichi, seat of the State Archaeological Museum.
Among the other buildings of religious architecture not to be missed are: the Romanesque Church of Ss. Vincenzo and Anastasio, the 13th-century Church of San Pietro Martire, the Church of Sant’Agostino, rebuilt in the 9th century, the 16th-century Church of Santa Maria della Carità . The temples dedicated to the patron saint are also worth mentioning, such as Sant’Emidio alle Grotte and Sant’Emidio Rosso.
Among the monuments are to be remembered: the Roman bridge of Solestà, the ruins of the Roman theater, the caves of the Annunziata, a cyclopean construction of the Roman period, the Pia Fortress, the Malatesta Fort, the nineteenth-century Ventidio Basso Theater, the Longobard Palace with the Torre degli Ercolani, one of the two hundred surviving towers that appear in medieval chronicles.
Near the city there is the Rocca di Castel Trosino, an ancient Lombard settlement near the Castellano stream