Italian Capital of Culture 2024 and a UNESCO Creative City of Music: Pesaro owes both crowns to Gioachino Rossini, born here in 1792 and celebrated every August by the Rossini Opera Festival, which draws opera lovers from half the world. The rest of the year the city keeps its own pace: Pomodoro's great bronze Sphere on the seafront, museums holding a Bellini altarpiece, the imperial villa on the hill.
Its everyday stroke of genius is the Bicipolitana, a "bicycle metro" of colour-coded lanes stitching sea to centre: few Italian towns ride better on two wheels.
Near Pesaro
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
