Lonely tourists in the Marche’s Ancona

I’ve already written about weekend trips we made to Ancona, in Italy’s Marche region, for my son’s indoor track season. Previously I wrote posts about the city’s bustling port, its Duomo perched at a panoramic point and its indoor track.

Since we were here in semi-lockdown state, we wandered this strangely deserted city, almost entirely devoid of tourists, but we look forward to returning when the usual hustle and bustle has resumed.

Still, we enjoyed our wanderings in this interesting regional capital.

Ancona is a small city, about 100,000 inhabitants, bordering the Adriatic Sea.

It is a bustling port city, and is well situated for a tourist base, surrounded by picturesque beaches and medieval hill towns.

My son and I were visiting during two weekends this winter – one rainy and one much better weather.

But it was still fun to wander this picturesque city with the (photogenic) wet cobblestones and the (sadly) empty city under semi-lockdown mode.

Ancona has a long history – settled by the Ancient Greeks fleeing Sicily’s Syracuse in around 387 BC, annexed into the Roman Empire by noneother than Julius Ceasar after crossing the Rubicon, and then its development into an important port city along the Adriatic – this was a city that flourished with trade from around the Mediterranean.

The city is a pleasant walking town, with beautiful churches and squares and,in normal, non-COVID lockdown times, plenty of cafes, bars and restaurants to enjoy. All rigorously shut down during our visit.

We’ll be back to explore in more bustling times, but we enjoyed our winter weekends staying in Marche’s capital of Ancona.

Next time, we look forward to not necessarily having the city to ourselves, but sharing it with the residents, students and visitors who normally crowd its picturesque streets and squares.

‘Til next time.