Fabriano

A must-see place for anyone visiting Fabriano is the Paper and Watermark Museum, set up in 1984 in the former convent of San Domenico. The entry ticket includes a guided tour, during which you can see a live demonstration of paper production. Visitors can also take part in workshops in papermaking. The recently reopened “Writing Civilization” branch of the museum provides an overview of the fundamental stages in the history of printing.

The itinerary continues to San Benedetto monastery, founded in 1244 by Sylvester Guzzolini and today still part of the community of the Monastery of Monte Fano. The church has a single-nave layout and interior decorations whose visual impact makes San Benedetto one of the city’s best examples of Baroque art.

To the left of San Benedetto church is the Oratorio del Gonfalone, built between 1610 and 1636 by the Archconfraternity of the Gonfalone in Rome. The exterior is somewhat bare, but visitors are taken by surprise on first seeing the Baroque interior and the wooden coffered ceiling carved and gilded with scenes from the Assumption of Mary.

A combined ticket (biglietto unico) for the Civic Museums of Fabriano includes the Bruno Molajoli Civic Art Gallery housed in a 15-century building, which preserves a historical collection covering a broad time span from the 13th to the 18th centuries, with a special focus on 14th-century Fabriano and the school of Allegretto Nuzi.

The “La Casa di Ester” (House of Ester) collection was bequeathed to the city by Ester Merloni in 2015 and contains some of the major avant-garde artists of the mid-20th century.

Opposite the art gallery stands San Venanzio cathedral, which has been the city’s main church since 1253. Worthy of note are the Santa Croce and San Giovanni Evangelista chapels, with frescoes by Giovanni di Corraduccio in the first and by Allegretto Nuzi and the Master of San Verecondo in the second.

Now heading towards Via della Ceramica, at number 37 you find the Museum of Bicycle Crafts, a collection of vintage bicycles from all over Italy, dating from the 1910s to the 1970s presenting a cross-section of the 20th century and many forgotten crafts.

As you go down Corso della Repubblica you come to Piazza del Comune, the city’s main square since the Middle Ages, dominated by four public monuments: the 13th-century Palazzo del Podestà, Palazzo Vescovile, Palazzo Chiavelli and, in the centre, the Sturinalto fountain with its powerful jet, built in 1285 by Jacopo del Grondolo, who was inspired by the Pisano brothers’ Fontana Maggiore in Perugia.

Behind Palazzo Chiavelli you see the neoclassical façade of the theatre named after Gentile da Fabriano. Inside, the horseshoe-shaped auditorium is lined with four rows of boxes and an impressive stage curtain designed by Luigi Serra of Bologna.

On the left side of the square, the imposing loggia of San Francesco, rebuilt in the 17th century over a 15th-century portico, offers a marvellous view of Piazza del Comune. Going along the loggia you come to the Oratory of Charity, decorated at the end of the 16th century with a fine series of frescoes by the Mannerist artist Filippo Bellini of Urbino, depicting the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Opposite, the Guelfo Museum offers a rare example of works of graphic art by some of the great international modern and contemporary masters and works by the surrealist artist and Fabriano native Guelfo Bianchini.

Going down from the Oratory, you come to Piazza Manin with the Benedictine abbey church of SS. Biagio e Romualdo, a fine example of late Baroque in the city, with its organ by Gaetano Callido.

Continuing along Via le Povere and coming up to Via Gentile, you find the church of Sant’Onofrio, also known as Scala Santa (Holy Staircase), very close to the hearts of Fabriano worshippers, as it preserves fragments of the Scala Sancta in Roma.

The area of the city where the tanneries were once located is now home to the Polo Museale Zona Conce (Museum Complex of the Tanning District), which houses the museum dedicated to the artists and Fabriano natives Edgardo Mannucci and Quirino Ruggeri, with sculptures, paintings, prints and jewellery.

As you walk towards the Piano district, along Viale IV Novembre, you can admire some of the ancient remains of the past: the imposing San Lorenzo defensive tower, San Lorenzo bridge which once connected the towns of Attidium and Sentinum, the old Chiavelli paper mill where you can see parts of the old structure, and the ancient Romanesque-Gothic church of San Lorenzo near the historic Cartiere Miliani paper mill.

Not far from there, at the gates of Fabriano and the site of a 14th-century hospital, stands the church of Santa Maria Maddalena, whose interior preserves some remarkable 14th-century frescoes by the Master of Campodonico and a grand altarpiece dating back to 1615, by Orazio Gentileschi, depicting St Mary Magdalene in Penitence.

A few kilometres from Fabriano, on the slopes of Monte Maggio in the Apennines, is the small town of Cacciano, known for its artistic murals on houses, depicting scenes from nature, the animal world and the proud lives of rural folk and mountain dwellers in the Marche region.