In 1822 Eugène de Beauharnais — Napoleon's stepson, by then duke of Leuchtenberg — sold his sister Hortense thirty pieces of land and a palace here at Monte San Vito: they were part of the goods that had come to him when he was viceroy of Italy, and in their time they had been requisitioned from the collegiate church of the village, from its friars and from the Cistercian abbey near by. In the years that followed Hortense often came to stay in the village with her two sons, and one of those boys would become the emperor Napoleon III. Their tutor, Damiano Armandi, who also managed her property, went on to be at Ancona one of the leading men of the risings against the Papal State.
The first document that names Monte San Vito is of 1053. In 1177 Frederick Barbarossa took it from the marquis of Ancona to keep it under himself, and along with that granted it four castles, six villages and the territory that reached down to the sea. Then the place fell to Jesi, and it took Ancona two centuries and two popes to get it back. Its wealth came from farming: a document of Pius VII of 1803 values the comune's own patrimony at more than a hundred thousand Roman scudi. Two buildings tell the rest: the theatre called La Fortuna was a mill until, in the middle of the seventeen hundreds, some notables turned it into a hall for shows; and an old oil press at the edge of the centre had been begun as a church for the Poor Clares, and was converted after the Napoleonic suppressions.
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📅 Every year, on 15 June, with the Fiera di San Vito on the second or third Sunday
Monte San Vito celebrates Saint Vitus the Martyr on 15 June. The Fiera di San Vito is held on the second or third Sunday of the month.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Monte San Vito, but an easy day trip away.
