Pesaro and Gradara

 Edward Hutton's The Cities of Romagna and the Marches was written over 100 years ago and although Italy has changed, a traveler today can still appreciate the way he loved to sit, listen and observe the country and its people.  

Pesaro

It was a rainy morning when I left Rimini at last, and by train on account of the weather, for Pesaro; but I had not been in that delightful little city—one of the pleasantest in all the Marches—more than a few hours when the sun shone out again and Pesaro showed me a smiling face, as indeed I cannot but think she does to every one who enters her gates. I do not rightly know what it is in Pesaro that makes me feel always so happy there; whether it be the charm of her wide Piazza with its beautiful Palazzo della Prefettura, or the kindness and hospitality of her citizens, and not least of these who keep the inn, the Albergo Zongo, that noble old palace once a cardinal’s, dark and forbidding at first, but always to be remembered with pleasure and gratitude, or whether, after all,  one’s pleasure lies not so much in Pesaro herself as in the delight of the country in which she lies. Perhaps the happiness and lightness of heart that always comes to me in this little city by that shining morning sea is the result of all these charming things, for once to be had altogether and enjoyed without an afterthought.

Titian: Venus detail

For you may spend your morning pottering about the old town where there is nothing very serious to see, but where everything that meets your eye is graceful and charming. Your afternoon you may spend in the delightful rooms, gardens and terraces of the Villa Imperiale, where that Leonora, whom it is said Titian painted as Venus, as you may see in the Uffizi Gallery to this day, will seem to pass and repass, waiting the return of Francesco Maria of Urbino, or you may drive out to the great Rocca of Gradara, which the Malatesta built and held so long where there are two priceless treasures that certainly Pesaro cannot match *…. 

And for the evening, one strolls out of the great shadowy rooms of the Albergo Zongo and down the rough way into the Piazza and sits in the caffe under the arches of the Prefettura, listening to a country song, watching the people and catching now and then the tinkle of a mandolin, the throb of a guitar. All one’s days and nights in Pesaro are full of melodies, of form and colour and sound, and no one can be the least surprised that Rossini was born there, for the whole city and the hills and woods about it are full of music, to which the sea continually beats a grave and sober accompaniment gently breaking in a line of foam along the shore. (129-130)

*One of the art works in Gradara is a Della Robbia altarpiece.

The Robbia altarpiece is in a little desecrated chapel half-way up the Rocca. There we see the Madonna and Child with S. Jerome and Mary Magdalen, S. Catherine and S. Bonaventure, and beneath, in the predella, three scenes—S. Francis receiving the Stigmata, the Annunciation, and S. Mary Magdalen in the desert communicated by an angel. (137)

Edward Hutton: The Cities of Romagna and the Marches, NY, 1925.