Civitanova is two towns facing each other, and for twenty-five years they really were two separate comuni: in 1913 the port broke away and made itself autonomous, and the upper part found itself renamed Civitanova Alta; in 1938 they were reunited, but the town hall came down to the sea. It is the reversal of a two-thousand-year story: ancient Cluana stood on the coast, the Visigoths destroyed it and the survivors took refuge on the hill, in that Cluentis Vicus founded in 50 AD whose Roman inscription still stands in the entrance hall of the upper town hall. At the end of the eighteenth century the upper town counted nearly six thousand inhabitants and the port barely more than two hundred.
Today the ratio is inverted, and since 2017 Civitanova has had more inhabitants than its own provincial capital. Below, the fishing port, the boatyards and one of the liveliest seafronts in the Marche, with the liberty pavilions of the Lido Cluana; above, the walled town where Annibal Caro was born, who put the Aeneid into verse that stayed on school desks for centuries, and the theatre that bears his name, opened by Enrico Cecchetti, a dancer and choreographer famous the world over. In between, the footwear district that made the Macerata country a world capital of the shoe: outlets, the fish market, beach huts and beach sports, the Adriatic holiday in its working version.
Chiesa di Cristo Re · Chiesa di San Marone
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Next up: Saint Maro, first martyr of Piceno and patron of Civitanova Marche, Wednesday 18 August
Nearest airport: Ancona, 45 km away
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📅 Every year, on 18 August
Civitanova Marche celebrates Saint Maro the Martyr on 18 August; his remains have rested since the 2nd century on the hill that bears his name, where the sanctuary built on the site of the martyrdom of Piceno's first martyr stands.
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 Civitanova Marche, but an easy day trip away.
