What is Treia known for?

Ottocento street-game between four contrade revived in 1978, held the first Sunday of August across the centro storico. Giuseppe Valadier building on Piazza della Repubblica, home to an agronomic academy founded in the 1400s as the Accademia dei Sollevati. Pope Pius VI restored the Roman name in 1790 after a thousand years of the town being known as Montecchio.

Treia is a comune in the province of Macerata, Marche region of Italy, about 51 kilometers from Ancona.

Marche · Macerata

Treia

A Macerata hill town, the Roman municipium Trea, renamed by Pope Pius VI in 1790 after centuries as Montecchio.

51 km / 32 mi

Nearest hub (Ancona)

9,013

Population

Apr–Oct

Best time to visit

Recognised as

Borghi più belli d'Italia
Città della Terra Cruda

Why come

Treia standsin the hills between the Potenza and Chienti valleys, thirty-five kilometers from Ancona. The Roman town of Trea lay on the plateau below, a municipium founded shortly after 49 BC that flourished between Augustus and Antoninus Pius. Around the year 1000 the population moved up to the more defensible hilltop of Montecchio, and the older site emptied. The new town stayed under the name Montecchio until 1790, when Pope Pius VI raised it to the rank of città and restored its Roman name. The Piazza della Repubblica, on the highest point of the ridge, is closed at one end by the Cattedrale della Santissima Annunziata and at the other by Giuseppe Valadier's small Accademia Georgica, the eighteenth-century home of an agronomic academy founded in the fifteenth as the Accademia dei Sollevati. The Disfida del Bracciale, an Ottocento street-game in which four contrade compete, has filled the centro storico every first Sunday of August since 1978.

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Gallery

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Known for

Piazza della Repubblica
Belvedere piazza on the highest point of the ridge, closed by the Cattedrale della Santissima Annunziata at one end and the Accademia Georgica at the other.
Accademia Georgica
Eighteenth-century Giuseppe Valadier building housing an academy founded in the 1400s, with 1,196 parchments of the municipal archive and over 15,000 volumes.
Santuario del Santissimo Crocifisso
Cesare Bazzani sanctuary completed in the early twentieth century on the site of an older parish church, holding a sixteenth-century Umbrian fresco and a thirteenth-century crucifix.
Chiesa di San Filippo Neri
Built 1766-1773 to designs by Carlo Augustoni, holding a crucifix possibly dating from the thirteenth century.
Sito archeologico di Trea
Roman municipium on the plateau below the modern town, with wall traces, funerary monuments and epigraphic finds from the first and second centuries AD.

When to visit

Best months · Apr–Oct

Best
Hot or crowded
Quiet
Mostly closed

April through June and September into October are the best months for Treia. The hills between the Potenza and Chienti turn green in spring, the wheat ripens through June, and the autumn light on the long ridge runs gold through October. July and August touch the low thirties; the high point of the centro storico catches a breeze most afternoons, and the Disfida del Bracciale on the first Sunday of August is the busiest weekend of the year. November through March is quiet, with low fog in the river valleys below and many shops closed midweek; the Cattedrale and the Santuario stay open through winter on reduced hours.