Fratte Rosa

Until the end of the nineteenth century the village was simply called Fratte; the Rosa was added later, perhaps for the colour of the brick in its houses. The colour is no accident: clay has always been worked here, rustic terracotta is made here, and in 2002 the convent of Santa Vittoria became the Museum of Terracotta and Raw Earth. Even the fava bean of Fratte Rosa, which in the Lubachi area flowers later than others, wants clay and limestone soil.

The old name was Castrum Fractarum, and the community was probably formed by survivors of Suasa, the Roman town destroyed by Alaric's Visigoths not far from here. In the Middle Ages Fratte Rosa was the chief place of the Ravegnana, a small state dependent on the monks of Ravenna, and later a stronghold of Fano: an enclave of the Church inside the Duchy of Urbino, which the Montefeltro and then the Della Rovere always tried to take. The hamlet of Torre San Marco, instead, was a fief of the Bonarelli counts of Ancona from 1562 to 1738.