Teatro Feronia and Teatro Bramante

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Teatro Feronia

   San Severino Marche has one of the most unusual town squares in Italy. The Piazza del Popolo is an elongated ellipse, lined with arcades and palaces, and it was originally a market space outside the walls of the medieval town on the hill above. Today it is the heart of a town of eight thousand people in the valley of the Potenza river, in the inland Marche, and the Teatro Feronia stands on it, an elegant nineteenth-century theatre named after an ancient Italic goddess of fertility and freedom.

   Read the complete Teatro Feronia write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Teatro Feronia is where the day begins. Next is Assisi.

2. 2. Assisi

   From the valley floor Assisi looks like a long pale ribbon draped across the lower slope of Monte Subasio, and the colour comes from the mountain itself. The town is built of Subasio stone, a limestone that ranges from cream to rose, and in the evening light the whole place glows pink. It is, of course, the town of Francis, the merchant's son who gave away everything in the early thirteenth century and founded the Franciscan order, and of Clare, who followed him. The great basilica built over his tomb, begun in 1228, has two churches one above the other, and the frescoes inside, including the cycle of the saint's life traditionally attributed to Giotto, changed the course of European painting.

   Read the complete Assisi write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Assisi comes up about 86 km into the recorded legs. Next is Teatro Bramante.

3. 3. Teatro Bramante

   Urbania has had three names. It began as Castel delle Ripe, became Casteldurante in the thirteenth century, and was renamed in 1636 when Pope Urban VIII took over the duchy and gave it his own. In the Renaissance it was a pottery town, famous for majolica, the tin-glazed painted earthenware that Duke Guidobaldo and his court sent as gifts around Europe, and the ceramics still sold in the shops carry on that tradition. The theatre that bears the name of Bramante, the great architect who was born in nearby Fermignano, stands in the town centre, a small, intimate house with tiers of boxes in the Italian manner, and the town itself is a small walled place on a bend of the Metauro river, with brick arcades and a handsome ducal palace.

   Read the complete Teatro Bramante write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 188 km into the recorded legs you reach Teatro Bramante. Next is back through Assisi.

4. 4. back through Assisi

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Assisi write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Assisi, late in the day. Next is Teatro Feronia.

5. 5. Teatro Feronia

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Teatro Feronia write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Teatro Feronia. That is the ride.