How Was Ancona Built

Ancona is built in layers up a slope, and the war removed several of them.

The quay

The oldest structure still in use is the harbour itself. Trajan's mole of AD 115 defined the shape of the port, and the arch on it — tall, narrow, in white marble, without reliefs — was designed to be seen from the sea by ships coming in.

The hill

San Ciriaco sits on the summit of Monte Guasco on the footings of a Greek temple to Venus. It is a Greek-cross church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries with a twelve-sided dome, one of the earliest in Italy, a Romanesque porch carried on stone lions, and Byzantine detail throughout — the architecture of a city that traded east.

Romanesque in the town

Santa Maria della Piazza, lower down, has a facade of blind arcading and carved figures over excavated early-Christian floors, which is the clearest surviving evidence of the pre-medieval city.

Venetian Gothic

The Loggia dei Mercanti was given its elaborate front in the 1450s by Giorgio da Sebenico, a Dalmatian architect — the Adriatic working in both directions.

Vanvitelli

In the 1730s Luigi Vanvitelli built the Mole, a pentagonal quarantine island in brick reached by bridges, and the Arco Clementino at the harbour entrance. The Mole is now the best building in the city to spend an afternoon in.

The citadel

The Cittadella on Monte Astagno was built for the papacy in the 1530s by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, a star-shaped artillery fort put there to hold the city rather than to defend it from anyone at sea.

The rebuild

Bombing, the 1972 earthquake and the 1982 landslide between them account for most of what is modern here, and much of it was put up quickly.