Pesaro

Pesaro [ˈpeːzaro] is a port city in the Marche region (Ital.: Marche) and the capital and administrative seat of the province of Pesaro and Urbino.

Pesaro has 95,203 inhabitants (as of 31 December 2019) in an urban area of 126 km² and is an important tourist centre on the Italian Adriatic coast. The town lies on the river Foglia, which flows into the Adriatic Sea near the historic old town.

The neighbouring municipalities are: Fano, Gabicce Mare, Gradara, Mombaroccio, Monteciccardo, Montelabbate, Tavullia and Vallefoglia.

Culture

On 10 June 1818 the new opera house was ceremoniously opened with a performance of the opera La gazza ladra by the composer Gioachino Rossini.

The Italian state has awarded Rossini's birthplace in Pesaro, which now houses a museum, the European Heritage Label, along with the birthplaces of Giacomo Puccini in Lucca and Giuseppe Verdi in Le Roncole. Pesaro has also hosted annual summer festivals in honour of Gioachino Rossini since 1980.

The Pesaro Film Festival (Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema) has been held in Pesaro since 1965.

Places of interest

Pesaro Cathedral: a new church was built over an early Christian building in the 13th/early 14th century, of which only a Gothic portal and the heavily restored façade are visible today. The three-nave interior is entirely the result of extensive alterations between 1866 and 1903. In 1633 the cathedral was dedicated to Maria Assunta. The most spectacular work of art in the interior are the late Roman mosaics, which were discovered in 1611 in two layers, 1.50 and 2.20 m below the present floor, uncovered in 1866 and since 2000 have been made at least partially visible by several large glass plates in the floor. On an area of 600 m², representations of ancient myths and Christian symbols are reproduced in addition to musical patterns.

The Musei Civici in Palazzo Mosca (Piazza Toschi Mosca 21) display sacred paintings from the early 15th century onwards, including a major work by Giovanni Bellini, the "Pala di Pesaro", a large coronation of the Virgin Mary with saints, dating from 1475. The excellent ceramics department contains probably the best assemblage of Renaissance majolica from the famous pottery centres of the Marche (Gubbio, Deruta, Urbino, Pesaro, Casteldurante) that the country has to offer.

Also accessible via the museum is the Domus Romana, a Roman dwelling excavated in 2005, furnished with mosaics and inhabited from the 1st to the 3rd century. The presentation of the remains is commented by multimedia.

The Art Nouveau house Villa Ruggieri, on the Piazzale della Liberta, open to the sea, is remarkable. In the center of this square, Arnaldo Pomodoro's "Sfera Grande" from 1998, a huge, gilded polyester sphere, whose torn and brittle appearing surface "stimulates the viewer to a symbolic interpretation of the state of the world", floats above a water level.

With its modest but old building fabric, the ghetto, the Jewish quarter with its synagogue, is a less spectacular but rare and historically noteworthy testimony to cultural history.

The Villa Imperiale, the most important Renaissance palace building in the Marche, is located a few kilometres outside the city on the slopes of Monte Piccio. Begun in 1469, it was generously rebuilt in 1530 and richly furnished. Today it belongs to the private property of the Albani family and is only accessible to a limited extent.

• In the parish church of Casteldimezzo hangs a wooden crucifix by the sculptor Antonio Bonvicino.

Villa Imperiale


Interior of the cathedral


Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary