Fabriano

The Latin motto on Fabriano's coat of arms speaks of paper, and it is no affectation: from the thirteenth century the master papermakers here perfected the watermark and animal sizing, and the town became the supplier of the chancelleries and the artists of Europe. In 1889, at the Paris Universal Exposition — the one of the Eiffel Tower — the Cartiere Miliani took the gold medal for the quality of their products. And today the mills still make the paper of watercolourists and of banknotes. The museum of paper and watermarks stands in a former Dominican convent, where the masters work at the vat beneath the frescoes Antonio da Fabriano painted with an eye on Fra Angelico's San Marco.

The town that invented that paper also has a school of painters — Allegretto Nuzi, and above all Gentile da Fabriano, prince of international gothic — and a square among the most harmonious in the Marche, with the palazzo del Podestà and the Sturinalto fountain. The theatre that bears Gentile's name entered the world heritage list in 2026, within the serial site of the Italian-style theatres of central Italy. The church of San Benedetto is the largest temple in Italy dedicated to the founder of the order after Montecassino's, and in the comune's territory, at Val di Castro, died Saint Romuald, who had founded the Camaldolese. Of its history there remain the reckonings too: after the massacre of the Chiavelli, in 1435, the city passed to the Papal State; at the plebiscite of unification two thousand three hundred and fifty-four townspeople voted for Italy and two against; and in 1930, at Albacina, Aristide Merloni opened a modest scales factory out of which an empire of household appliances would come. The salame of Fabriano is the extra course nobody refuses.