Le Marche, Italy: Undiscovered Beauty, Food & Culture
Discover Le Marche: Italy’s Underrated and Unspoiled Gem
And so to Le Marche, one of Italy’s least spoilt and most beautiful regions. The Chianti-shire effect has yet to spread its posh English roots across the Apennine Mountains that cut a lofty strip down the peninsula’s spine, so you really do get an Italy that feels, tastes and sounds like it should.
Exploring the Landscape of Le Marche: From Coast to Mountains
From the narrow coastal plain, the land rises first gently, then sharply, to the peaks of the Apennines. The further uphill you go, the fewer the folk you will find. And once you get into the Sibillini Mountains National Park, there are very few folk at all for most of the year. Things, though, do heat up in August when lots of city dwellers from Rome and Milan make for the uplands in an attempt to keep cool.
But, as is the case with Dartmoor or Exmoor, you can soon lose the madding crowd if you so wish by the simple expedient of walking more than 500 metres from the nearest road.
Staying in Remote Luxury: La Cantina in the Sibillini Mountains
The house we rented was far from the madding crowd anyway. La Cantina is situated in its own remote valley near to the mountain resort of Fiastra – a small village situated next to a lake which is just about the only place in miles that draws anything like a crowd.
To reach the large old farmhouse we had to negotiate a mile and a half of white gravel track, so that when we arrived we felt quite grandiose in our very own private remote and scenic location. The place can easily sleep ten, it is fully equipped, and you can enjoy the sweeping views from its idyllically placed terraces.
Hills above Fiastra
Walking and Hiking in Le Marche: A Hiker’s Paradise
Once you are installed, you find that Le Marche is one of those places which attract the travel writer’s ubiquitous “something for everyone” phrase. After the journey, lovers of the countryside can chill out by simply walking around La Cantina’s immediate environs. The mountains are riddled with shepherds’ paths and no one seems to mind if you wander where’er ye will.
We walked over the watershed and down to the lake one day – a hot and exhausting hike that was rewarded with an icy bathe and lunch in one of Fiastra’s excellent restaurants.
Traditional Food in Le Marche: A Culinary Journey
Which brings me onto food. Apart from the almost guaranteed good weather, food is one of the main reasons for holidaying in Italy – and visitors to the Le Marche region will not be disappointed.
For me, antipasto rules the day when I’m in Italy and in Le Marche mountain salt-cured ham and lonza (salt-cured fillet of pork) reign supreme. After that, the classic primo piatta tends to be some sort of pasta swathed in a meat sauce – the region’s signature pasta dish is vincisgrassi, a rich baked lasagna without the usual tomatoes. For the main course there’s the ubiquitous meat grilled alle brace, but look out for delicious stuffed pigeons (piccione ripieno) and rabbit cooked with fennel (coniglio in porchetta).
Experiencing an Italian Village Fete in Le Marche
We were lucky enough to be invited to a local village fete – Italian style. Which means it started at night, featured unbelievable quantities of food and even more dancing. The tiny village of Sentino boasts less than 100 souls dwelling in its vertiginous demesne, and yet these few people organise an annual event in a manner that would make Glastonbury’s Michael Eavis turn green with envy.
When we reached the top of the mountain, more than 2,000 vehicles were already parked. Each, perhaps, brought four passengers. That’s 8,000 people. Because this is Italy, all needed feeding – and they would not be content with a burger in a bun. They wanted proper food – and they got it. The great meal began with an anti-pasti dish of charcuterie, then came a choice of pasta. My enormous bowl of fusilli punctuated with bits of artichoke is a masterpiece that I shall never forget.
Next, the seconda-piatta: a vast collation of sizzling meats. Then there were fields of salad and mountains of chips. All this was rounded off by huge melons and little cakes with the texture of Crunchie bars. Jugs of superb, slurpable, wine were delivered every other minute.
8,000 people. 32,000 courses. Provided by a small team of people from the tiny mountain village. And the really amazing fact? They do it for seven consecutive, exhausting, nights – and anyone can go if they get a ticket. Such events occur all over rural Italy on the various saints’ days during summer, so you may well be able to find one. If you do, starve yourself all day, grab a phrasebook, and go.
Discovering the Piano Grande: One of Europe’s Most Striking Landscapes
“Is food all you think about?” asked my partner one day. As an act of remorse I took her on a drive up into the central region of the Sibillini Mountains and discovered one of the most amazing landscapes I’ve seen anywhere in Europe. Piano Grande is a huge flat-bottomed plateau ringed by steep mountains – it is 1,250 metres above sea level, eight kilometres long and five wide. In spring and summer it is transformed into a carpet of wild flowers and you see seas of poppies, wild tulips and exotic alpine flowers such as carex buxbaumii.
Castelluccio and Its Famous Lentils
You will also see lentils. The strange basin in the mountains is famous for them. Italians believe the thin-skinned lentils grown here to be the best in the world, better even than the green Puy lentils so beloved by the French.
Castelluccio
And, having tasted them, I have to agree. And taste them you must even if your partner does think you are obsessed by food. The little village of Castelluccio is perched on its own mini-mountain right in the centre of the plain – and every one of its restaurants majors on the famous pulses.
Author and his partner at Castelluccio
The place is more reminiscent of Nepal than anything you’d expect to see in Italy – and even when you sit escaping the summer heat under an awning eating your lentil stew, you get the feeling that this is probably a tough and windy place in which to live for most of the year.
Indeed, it comes as no surprise to learn that Castelluccio’s church bell is rung continuously during bad winter weather until every member of the village’s tiny population is safe at home.
Castelluccio
Visiting the Adriatic Coast of Le Marche
In the opposite direction from the mountains lies the Adriatic coast – a destination best avoided in August if my experiences are anything to go by. However, the beaches along this sandy littoral are the maritime playgrounds of urban Italy, and so the whole crowded craziness of it all does offer huge amusement value to the amateur anthropologist. The beachside Tannoys blare machine-gun Italian, youths strut, fat ladies wade through ice creams the size of suitcases, impossibly beautiful girls loll scenically, and everyone attaches themselves to brightly coloured and expensive-to-hire lounger chairs. It is all so very, very Italian. You couldn’t be in any other country in the world.
Seafood in Ancona: Brodetto and Beyond
And, being Italy, there is food. Colossal seafood luncheons are consumed up and down the coast with such relish you wonder how there can be any fish left in any sea in the world. My own little weakness in the coastal area around Ancona is brodetto – a marine stew which must be made with 13 different species of fish – not a fillet more, not a fillet less.
Final Thoughts: Why Le Marche is a Hidden Treasure of Italy
Sorry, back to food again. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid the stuff in Italy. And who would want to? I’d go as far as to say that when it comes to average food offered in average restaurants, Italy has the best cuisine in the world.
