Parco Nazionale
Parco Nazionale in Marche
6 towns
Marche holds 6 Parco Nazionale sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Macerata, Ascoli Piceno, and Fermo provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Amandola, Valfornace, and San Ginesio. 3 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Amandola
Province: Fermo · 550 m
A Sibillini gateway at 550 meters on three hills above the Tenna valley, founded 1248 and damaged but not levelled in 2016.
Valfornace
Province: Macerata · 441 m
A 909-resident Sibillini commune at 441 meters in the upper Chienti valley, born in 2017 from the merger of Pievebovigliana and Fiordimonte.
San Ginesio
Province: Macerata · 680 m
The Balcony of the Sibillini at 680 meters, with a 1295 pilgrim hospital and the only flowery gothic collegiate church in the Marche.
Visso
Province: Macerata · 607 m
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Acquasanta Terme
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 392 m
A sulphur-spring spa at 392 meters in the upper Tronto valley, used for cures since the Roman consul Lucio Munazio Planco around 50 AD.
Arquata del Tronto
Province: Ascoli Piceno · 777 m
At 777 meters between two national parks, the Marche commune levelled by the 2016 earthquakes and still rebuilding nine years on.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Putignano
Province: Bari
Europe's longest-running carnival — Putignano Carnevale has run continuously since 1394, with 631 years of cartapesta papier-mâché floats, a 26,000-resident Murgia town on the Bari–Lecce plateau, and the Grotta del Trullo karst cave inside the centro.
Pistoia
Province: Pistoia
Italy's nursery capital and the medieval Tuscan rival that gave its name to the pistol — a quietly extraordinary centro storico of zebra-striped Romanesque churches, Andrea della Robbia's polychrome frieze on the Ospedale del Ceppo, and Italy's Capital of Culture 2017, all 30 minutes from Florence by train.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Caldes
Province: Trento
A scattered Val di Sole commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.
Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria on the old Via Flaminia, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.