How Was Ascoli Piceno Built

Ascoli is the most materially consistent city in central Italy, and that is not an accident of taste.

One stone

Travertine from the local quarries was cheap, abundant and easy to cut. It was used for foundations, walls, window frames, paving, bridges and sculpture, across two thousand years, by Romans, medieval masons and twentieth-century councils alike. The result is a centre in a single colour that changes character entirely with the light.

The Roman grid

The street plan of the old city is still recognisably Roman, laid out on the flat ground between the rivers, with the theatre and the Porta Gemina — a twin-arched gate — surviving at the edges.

The bridges

The Ponte di Solestà carries a single Roman arch across the Tronto in one span and is still in daily use on foot. The Ponte di Cecco, downstream on the Castellano, is Roman in origin, was rebuilt after wartime demolition, and is named for the astrologer.

Towers

In the communal period the leading families built tall square tower-houses in travertine; dozens survive in part, cut down, absorbed into later buildings or converted into campaniles, which is why the roofline is so irregular.

Piazza del Popolo

The square was regularised in the sixteenth century, when the buildings around it were given a continuous arcade and uniform windows — an early and rigorous piece of town planning. Its travertine paving was laid in the twentieth century and is polished by use.

Rebuilding

Anti-seismic strengthening after 2016 is visible on many facades as steel ties and banding, and nobody here pretends otherwise.