Explorer Ancône

Santa Maria della Piazza is a Romanesque church near the port of Ancona, built in the late 12th century over earlier Christian churches whose remains date back to the 5th and 6th centuries. Its façade, signed by Master Filippo in 1210, is covered with rows of small blind arches and carved figures. Glass panels in the floor show the mosaic pavements of the older buildings.

The National Archaeological Museum of the Marches occupies the 16th-century Palazzo Ferretti in Ancona. Founded in 1863, it shows finds from excavations across the region, from prehistory and the Picene culture of the 9th to 4th centuries BC to Greek Ankon, the Senone Gauls and the Romans. It is run by the state museums of the Marche.

The Mole Vanvitelliana is a pentagonal building on an artificial island in the port of Ancona, designed by Luigi Vanvitelli for Pope Clement XII and built from 1733 to 1743 as a quarantine station. A small neoclassical temple of Saint Roch stands in its inner courtyard. Today it hosts exhibitions, concerts and the Museo Omero, a tactile art museum.

Ancona Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Cyriacus, stands on the Guasco hill above the port, on the site of a Greek temple and a 6th-century basilica. Enlarged between the 11th and 13th centuries into a Greek-cross church, it mixes Romanesque, Byzantine and Gothic forms; two columns of its porch rest on stone lions. Remains of the earlier buildings lie under glass.

The Arch of Trajan is a Roman marble arch on the harbour of Ancona, erected in AD 115 by the Senate and people of Rome to honour Emperor Trajan, who had enlarged the port at his own expense. Attributed to Apollodorus of Damascus, it stands 18.5 metres high on a podium reached by a wide flight of steps. Its bronze statues and gilded letters were taken in 848.