The name comes from the Greek ankón, elbow: Syracusan Greeks founded the city in 387 BC on a bent promontory that forms the middle Adriatic's only natural harbour. Trajan's Arch, raised in 115 AD, still thanks the emperor who expanded that port; on Guasco hill, the cathedral of San Ciriaco blends Romanesque and Byzantine while watching the ferries leave for Greece.
Ancona is a transit capital that rewards a stop: the Passetto with its fishermen's caves dug into the cliff, a gallery holding Titian and Lotto, and — thanks to that elbow — a sunset that falls on the sea, a rarity on the Adriatic coast.
Near Ancona
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
