Le Marche: Italy's Best-Kept Secret, and My Home

Why Le Marche? A Letter from Someone Who Grew Up Here

I need to tell you something about my bias before we go any further. Le Marche is not a destination I evaluated and added to our portfolio. It is the place where my grandmother taught me to make vincisgrassi (the marchigiano lasagna, richer and wilder than the Bolognese version, layered with ragu bianco and chicken giblets). It is where I learned to find tartufi by watching the dogs of old men in oak forests outside Acqualagna, long before truffle hunting became a tourist experience. Every ristorante, every borgo, every winding road I recommend on this page, I know from decades of living here. That is not objectivity. It is something better. It is the knowledge that comes from a lifetime of Sunday pranzi, neighbourhood sagre, and arguments about whether the olive all’ascolana from the friggitoria in Piazza del Popolo are better than the ones your zia makes at home. (They are not. But do not tell her.)

The comparison you will read everywhere is “Le Marche is Italy’s next Tuscany.” I understand why people say it, and I use the phrase myself in marketing because it works. But it is not accurate. Le Marche is not the next anything. Toscana is famous for its interior: the colline, the vigneti, the cipressi. Le Marche has all of that, plus 180 kilometres of Adriatico coastline with sixteen Blue Flag spiagge and the Monti Sibillini national park with peaks above 2,400 metres. Add Uliassi in Senigallia, which holds three Michelin stars and a consistent place in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Toscana does not have an equivalent restaurant. That fact alone tells you something about the gastronomic depth of this region.

The practical argument is simpler. Le Marche runs thirty to forty percent cheaper than Toscana for comparable accommodation, food, and experience quality. A four-course pranzo with local Verdicchio at a countryside trattoria costs €30 to €45 per person. A luxury agriturismo with piscina, terrazza, and colazione marchigiana (which includes ciauscolo, formaggio pecorino, and bread baked in a wood oven that morning) runs €100 to €200 per night. The same quality in Chianti costs half again as much, and you share it with ten times the visitors.

What to See and Do in Le Marche

Renaissance Art and History

Urbino was, after Firenze, the most important centre of the Italian Renaissance, and the Palazzo Ducale built by Duke Federico da Montefeltro remains one of the finest Renaissance buildings in the world. The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche inside it holds works by Piero della Francesca, Tiziano, Paolo Uccello, and Raffaello Sanzio, who was born in Urbino in 1483 and whose childhood home is now a small museo (entry €5) three minutes from the palazzo. Entry to the Galleria costs €8 to €10, and unlike the Uffizi in Firenze, you will share the rooms with a handful of other visitors rather than hundreds.

Ascoli Piceno is the other citta that anyone visiting Le Marche should know, and I say this with the full admission that it is my home city and that I have never been able to evaluate it without emotion. The centro storico is built almost entirely from travertino, a local stone that turns warm gold in afternoon light. The Piazza del Popolo is routinely named among the most beautiful public squares in Italy by people with no connection to the place. The Roman cisterns beneath Fermo (a thirty-minute drive north of Ascoli) date to the first century AD, hold thirty underground chambers, and cost €5 to visit. Gradara, on the northern coast near Pesaro, is a medieval castello so well preserved that the drawbridge still functions. Its connection to Dante’s Inferno (the story of Paolo and Francesca, murdered for their love in this very building) gives it a literary weight that most Italian castles lack.

Food and Wine

I am going to be direct with you about the food in Le Marche, because it is the reason most of our repeat visitors come back and the reason I chose to build a travel company here rather than in Roma or Firenze. Uliassi, run by chef Mauro Uliassi on the lungomare of Senigallia, is a three-Michelin-star ristorante that consistently ranks in the World’s 50 Best. A tasting menu runs approximately €250 per person before wine. Il Tiglio, hidden in a tiny village in the Sibillini mountains, holds one Michelin star and serves a tasting menu for roughly €120 in a setting so unassuming that first-time visitors drive past it twice before finding the door.

Beyond the starred restaurants, the cucina marchigiana operates at a level that most visitors do not expect from a region they have never heard of. Olive all’ascolana (large green olives stuffed with a mixture of meat, breaded, and fried) originated in Ascoli Piceno and remain the single most important street food in the region, available at every friggitoria for €5 to €8 for a plate of ten. Vincisgrassi is our lasagna, heavier and more complex than the Emilian version, layered with a ragu that traditionally includes chicken giblets and sweetbreads. Ciauscolo is a spreadable salame that exists nowhere else in Italy, soft enough to spread on bread like butter, made from pork ground three times and slowly smoked. Brodetto is the Adriatico fish stew, every coastal town arguing that their version (with or without tomato, with or without vinegar, with thirteen fish species or seven) is the definitive one. And formaggio di fossa, cheese aged in tufa pits for three months and unwrapped in November, produces a flavour so pungent and complex that it has its own dedicated sagra in Talamello every autumn.

The wines deserve an article of their own, and I will write one eventually. For now, know the essential names. Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi DOC is the white that put Le Marche on the international wine map: crisp, mineral, €10 to €25 per bottle at the cantina. Rosso Conero DOC comes from Montepulciano grapes grown on the slopes of Monte Conero, producing a red of genuine depth. Pecorino DOCG (not the cheese, the grape) is increasingly fashionable and deserving of the attention. And Lacrima di Morro d’Alba DOC is a fragrant, aromatic red that smells of violets and roses and is almost impossible to find outside Le Marche. A private degustazione at a local cantina costs €30 to €80 per person depending on the wines and the food pairings included. Our culinary experiences include private vineyard visits with the winemakers, not the tasting room staff.

Truffle Hunting

Acqualagna, a small town of four thousand inhabitants in the northern province of Pesaro, calls itself the truffle capital of Italy, and the claim is not marketing. During the last weekends of October and the first two weekends of November, the Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo Bianco Pregiato transforms the town. White truffles, fresh pasta, and the smell of something earthy and expensive rise from every stall. White truffle season runs from October through December. Black truffles are available year-round, with the prized tartufo nero invernale from January through March. Sant’Angelo in Vado, thirty minutes from Acqualagna, hosts its own tartufo bianco fair on the last weekends of October and draws fewer visitors while offering the same quality.

A private caccia al tartufo with a trained Lagotto Romagnolo costs €60 to €90 per person through our local tartufai. The experience includes a two-hour forest walk and concludes with a pranzo where the fresh tartufo is shaved over handmade tagliatelle at the hunter’s own table. We also visit the Beltrini family farm near Acqualagna, where the famiglia produces artisan formaggi and extra-virgin olive oil that you will not find in any shop outside the province. This is the kind of access that comes from personal friendships, not from booking platforms. Our Gourmet Le Marche tour (from €1,900 per person, five days) includes the truffle hunt, the Beltrini visit, Urbino, and a night in Bologna.

Beaches and Nature

The Riviera del Conero, south of Ancona, is where the Appennini meet the Adriatico. Limestone cliffs, hidden calette, and Blue Flag spiagge here bear no resemblance to the flat, developed beaches further north along the coast. The Spiaggia delle Due Sorelle (Two Sisters Beach) near Sirolo is accessible only by boat or by a steep trail, and the effort filters out the casual sunbathers, leaving clear water and relative quiet even in high summer. Sixteen beaches in Le Marche hold the Blue Flag designation for water quality and environmental standards.

Inland, the Monti Sibillini National Park covers nearly two million acres of Appennino wilderness shared with Umbria, offering hiking trails, mountain biking, and horseback riding through landscapes that shift from wildflower meadows in spring to dense forest in autumn. The Gola dell’Infernaccio (Hell’s Gorge, which is far more beautiful than its name suggests) is a river canyon hike that ends at the hermitage of San Leonardo, a place of genuine silence. The Grotte di Frasassi, one of Europe’s largest cave systems, discovered in 1971, charge €18 for a seventy-five-minute guided tour through cathedral-sized caverns that have taken millions of years to form. For something most travel guides do not mention: the Lame Rosse near Lago di Fiastra. These red sandstone formations have eroded into blade-like pinnacles, reached by a steep 3.5-kilometre trail. The geological landscape at the top is unlike anything else in central Italy.

Artisan Traditions

Le Marche is the shoemaking capital of Italy, and that is not an honorary title. The district around Montegranaro and Fermo produces footwear for Santoni, Tod’s, Loriblu, Nero Giardini, and Hugo Boss, among others. Doriano Marcucci, a bespoke calzolaio in Montegranaro whose clients include celebrities and heads of state, still works from a vintage bottega that smells of leather and history. We arrange private visits to artisan workshops for clients who appreciate the craftmanship behind Italian luxury goods. Urbania, northwest of Urbino, has produced handmade ceramiche since the fifteenth century. And in Offida, south of Ascoli, women still practice the traditional art of merletto a tombolo (bobbin lace), a craft so labour-intensive that a single tablecloth takes months to complete.

Best Time to Visit Le Marche

May and June deliver the best combination of comfortable temperatures (twenty to twenty-eight degrees Celsius), wildflowers across the Sibillini foothills, and light tourist traffic. September and October add the vendemmia (grape harvest) and the beginning of truffle season, which transforms the inland towns into a series of food festivals and market events that no other Italian region matches in concentration. I have a personal preference for late October, when the Acqualagna truffle fair is running and the autumn light turns the colline gold.

July and August bring peak beach season along the Adriatico. The coastal towns (Senigallia, Numana, Sirolo, San Benedetto del Tronto) fill with Italian families on their annual summer holiday. The energy is infectious if you enjoy Italian beach culture: stabilimenti balneari, long lunches under ombrelloni, and evening passeggiata along the lungomare. Inland, however, summer heat can be intense, and the hill towns are better visited in the cooler shoulder months. November through March is quiet, cold in the mountains, and mild on the coast. The winter months are for truffle obsessives (tartufo nero invernale season peaks in January and February) and travelers who want the region entirely to themselves. The Sferisterio opera season in Macerata runs in July, and the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro runs in August, both of which are worth planning a trip around if you love classical music.

Where to Stay in Le Marche

For families and groups of six or more, our luxury ville offer the best combination of space, privacy, and the countryside immersion that makes Le Marche special. Villa Le Volte (from €560 per person) is a restored seventeenth-century property near Cupra Marittima with eight camere da letto, an infinity piscina overlooking the Adriatico, an outdoor pizza oven, and four separate apartments that sleep up to eighteen guests. The property dates to the late 1600s and was once a hunting lodge. Travertino floors, stone walls, and large windows flooding every room with light give it the kind of character that no modern hotel can replicate. Castello di Luco (from €450 per person) provides a more intimate setting for smaller groups.

In the cities, Ascoli Piceno offers boutique alberghi in converted palazzi within walking distance of Piazza del Popolo. Urbino has small hotels near the Palazzo Ducale that put you minutes from the Galleria Nazionale. Pesaro, on the northern coast, has evolved from a traditional seaside resort town into a cultural hub with improved accommodation options following its designation as Italian Capital of Culture.

For travellers who want authentic countryside immersion at the most accessible price point, the agriturismi of Le Marche represent some of the best value in Italy. A working farm with rooms, home-cooked cena using produce from the property, and views across vigneti and olive groves to the sea costs €80 to €150 per night including colazione. The marchigiana colazione, I should warn you, will ruin you for hotel breakfast buffets forever: ciauscolo, pecorino, fresh bread from the wood oven, local miele, and fruit from the orto (kitchen garden).

How to Get to Le Marche

Ancona’s Raffaello Sanzio airport (AOI) has limited international routes, primarily from London Stansted via Ryanair and seasonal connections from other European cities. For most of our American clients, the practical options are flying into Bologna (two-hour drive south on the A14 motorway) or Roma Fiumicino (three-hour drive via the A1 and the ancient Via Salaria). The Via Salaria is one of the oldest roads in Italy, cutting through the Appennini in a drive that is itself worth the trip. We arrange private NCC transfers from both airports, with costs ranging from €300 to €500 depending on the route and vehicle.

By train, the Adriatico coastal line connects Pesaro, Fano, Senigallia, Ancona, and San Benedetto del Tronto reliably and comfortably. Reaching the inland borghi and hill towns by public transport is impractical. You will either need a rental car or a private autista, and for travelers who want to drink Verdicchio at lunch without worrying about the drive home, the autista is the better choice. Our tours include NCC drivers who know every backroad, every shortcut past the ZTL (zona traffico limitato), and every trattoria that does not appear on Google Maps.

Sample Le Marche Itineraries

A five-day gourmet itinerary begins with a private transfer from Bologna to Urbino, with a lunch stop in the microstate of San Marino. In Urbino you visit the Palazzo Ducale and the Raphael birthplace before your first tartufo dinner. Day two takes you into the forests outside Acqualagna for a private caccia al tartufo with a local tartufaio and his Lagotto Romagnolo, followed by pranzo at an osteria in the truffle capital and an afternoon visit to the Beltrini farm for formaggio and olio d’oliva tastings. The remaining days cover Ascoli Piceno (walking tour, olive all’ascolana, and Rosso Piceno wine) and a final night in Bologna. This is our Gourmet Le Marche tour, from €1,900 per person.

For a deeper exploration of seven to eight days, our Secret Italy tour (from €5,150 per person) combines Le Marche with neighbouring Abruzzo: L’Aquila and the Gran Sasso mountains, the Trabocchi fishing platforms on the Adriatic coast, Ascoli Piceno, and a scenic return to Roma along the Via Salaria. A ten-day option extends coverage to the Conero coast for spiaggia days, Senigallia for dinner at Uliassi, and Macerata for the Sferisterio if you visit in summer.

Or tell us what matters most to you and we build around it. A multigenerational family that wants beaches and flat terrain gets a different itinerary than a couple celebrating an anniversary who want Michelin stars and tartufo. A group of friends obsessed with wine gets something else entirely. That is what bespoke means when the person designing your trip grew up in the region you are visiting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Explore More of Italy

• Tuscany : Two hours west. The famous neighbour with vineyards, villas, and Florence.
• Umbria : Just across the Appennini. Orvieto, Spoleto, and truffle country that mirrors our own.
• Rome : Three hours by Via Salaria. Combine the capital with Le Marche for the best of both worlds.
• Puglia : Further south along the Adriatico. Masserie, trulli, and the slow summer Le Marche shares in spirit.

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