Numana

The sanctuary of Numana keeps an old crucifix of cedar wood that everyone, for centuries, has called «the cross of Sirolo» — that is, by the name of the neighbouring village. The explanation is practical: in the sixteenth century Numana was in decline and the pilgrims who came to honour the sacred wood found lodging in the nearby castle of Sirolo, so the name of the place where they ate and slept stuck to the object. On eighteenth-century medals the «cross of Sirolo» appears with a false beard and a long robe adorned with votive offerings, like the Madonna of Loreto, and from this comes the saying everyone in the Marche once knew: «Who goes to Loreto and not to Sirolo sees the mother and not the son». The Christ, in fact, is not the suffering one of the western tradition: he is shown in the eastern manner, triumphant, crowned, eyes open and face serene, without a beard.

The village's name, too, had trouble staying its own. On old maps it was Humana, then Umana, and only with the royal decree of 18 December 1869 did it officially become Numana. Before all that, though, this was a real city: a Greek emporium among the most important of the Adriatic, which had its best years in the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ, that is before the Syracusans founded Ankón, today's Ancona — and it was precisely the birth of that city that made it decline. Earthquakes and seaquakes did the rest, carrying away pieces of cliff and of the old town. Numana had remained joined to Sirolo, and became an autonomous comune again only in 1928.