Day 67 ~ Ancona, Italy—Now that’s Italian…or maybe Greek!

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building after seeing Italy.  ~ Fanny Burney

Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Ancona is the first of many Italian ports of call on our itinerary. The Greeks were the original settlers here and Ancona, their name for the place, means “elbow” and describes the natural harbor here. Though the town beckoned with its own ancient walls and interesting-looking cathedral high on a hilltop, we were headed into the countryside of the Marche (rhymes with Parkay!) region to visit the walled Renaissance town of Urbino. The Marche area is achingly lovely, a rumpled patchwork quilt tossed at the feet of the Apennines (the mountain range that runs down the middle of Italy like an exposed spine).

Urbino is everything you’d expect a walled town to be. It was like stepping into the Game of Thrones, except for a few stray automobiles. The streets are cobbled and never level.

In fact, the grade we had to walk to reach the piazza with a fountain that was to be our final meeting point was steeper than Matterhorn Drive in Park City, Utah (We used to live on the side of the mountain there at an elevation of 7200 feet!) Then after a short respite to catch our breaths, our guide led us up another winding street to the Ducal Palace that has been transformed into an art gallery.

The palace was originally home to Federico da Montefeltro, first the Count, then the Duke of Urbino. You may have seen this remarkable painting of him. He wasn’t born with a profile like that. During a joust, he suffered a terrible injury that took his right eye and deformed his nose, but he survived. A man of culture, he took pains to cultivate artists like Francesca and Raphael, who was born in Urbino.

Raphael’s La Muta is reminiscent of Da Vinci’s La Gioconda (aka Mona Lisa) and in fact the two men were good friends. However, Raphael had a fierce rivalry with Michaelangelo and both feared the other would steal ideas for their work. (There was no such thing as a copyright then. Musicians often lifted themes from others’ compositions.  Handel was notorious for this, but his renditions were generally considered an improvement on the originals.)

Francesca’s Flagellation of Christ was the first known example of vanishing point perspective. Our guide is pointing out the central spot to which all invisible lines attach, giving the work depth both in space and time. The foreground figures are all dressed in Renaissance clothing. It would be as if they were in business suits today. The figures around Christ are farther in the background and deeper in time as well.

After touring the first floor of the palazzo, (BTW, Europeans call the street level “Ground” and what Americans would call the second floor, they name the first.) we had a little free time to grab lunch before returning to our motor coach. I had a cheese croissant sandwich and was just starting to eat my chocolate fundamente gelato (OMGosh! Creamy, sweet and rich enough to serve at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb!) when our guide called for us to head to the waiting bus.

But we didn’t go back down the steep way we’d come into Urbino. Instead, she led us UP! I couldn’t eat and breathe and walk at the same time, so I sorrowfully dumped more than half the gelato in a trash bin and began the miserable slog up a lane that was even steeper than the first one we took to enter the town.

I can walk on uneven surfaces and climb stairs and hills, but I need to monitor my O2 sats while I do it to make sure I don’t drop to unsafe levels. This makes keeping up with a group problematic. I had to stop three times and wait until my numbers came back up to the high 90’s before continuing. But I wasn’t alone. Along with the DH, several members of the group hung back with me when I had to stop. Their encouragement was priceless.

And here’s where it gets weird. Once we reached the upper gate to exit the walled city, we were led to a set of escalators to go DOWN from level 10 to level 7. Then we took an elevator down to level 6 where we had to change to a different elevator to go all the way to level 0. Then we walked across a parking lot to where our bus waited.

I’m happy to report I was not the last one to make to the bus. A party of four came after us. Then the bus drove around the town of Urbino and back to the lower gate where we’d first entered the town to pick up two more guests from our group.

By all that’s holy, WHY?

This excursion was designated “moderate,” but if that was moderate a “strenuous” trip would have killed me. But despite the illogical way our tour was organized, I really enjoyed the visit to Urbino. This was Princess’s maiden call to Ancona, and there are obviously a few bugs to be worked out with their excursion partners. The easy fix would be to drop us off at the upper gate and let us walk mostly downhill to be picked up at the lower gate.

I’m sure they’ll figure things out for the next group that comes to Urbino. I could stand to go again. After all, I’m sort of owed the rest of that gelato!