Parallel valleys, and a mountain in the wrong place
Ninety per cent of the region is hill or mountain, and the plain is only a strip along the sea.
The Marche have the highest proportion of hill country of any Italian region: nearly seventy per cent of the territory, plus thirty per cent mountain. Real plain exists only in the coastal strip and the valley floors, which is why almost every village sits high up, on a ridge or a spur.
The Sibillini
The Monti Sibillini national park is the high end of the region: Vettore reaches 2,476 metres, the lake of Pilato is the only glacial lake in the Apennines, and the Infernaccio gorge is a cleft where the road ends and the path begins. The 2016 earthquake hit these villages hard, and many are still being rebuilt: check before planning a climb.
The Conero, one of a kind
Between Ancona and Numana a limestone massif of five hundred and seventy-two metres ends sheer above the sea. It is the only relief between Trieste and the Gargano that touches the Adriatic, and the result is a coast completely unlike the rest: white cliffs, shingle beaches, deep clear water. It has been a regional park since 1987.
The gorges
Where the rivers cut through the limestone ridges, narrow long gorges open: the Gola della Rossa and Frasassi, with the largest cave complex in Europe; the Gola del Furlo, where the Via Flaminia passes through a tunnel the Romans dug in AD 76; the Fiastrone and Infernaccio gorges. They are where you keep cool in August.
The coast
A hundred and seventy kilometres, nearly all of sand or fine shingle, with the ports where the rivers reach the sea. The best-known beach is Senigallia, thirteen kilometres of very fine sand that earned it the name of velvet beach.