The town of Ascoli is truly a “little gem” shining brightly in the middle of Italy. During the day, buildings and even paving stones sparkle in the sunlight.
At night, everything is even more stunning under the moonlight, on the towers, awnings and street lights, a perfect reflection that makes the place look like an unreal mirage.
All this beauty comes from a local stone of the town of Ascoli – Travertine, a gem similar to marble, sparkling white in the sun, pink at sunset and glowing. glowing under the evening street lights.
A miniature ancient Rome
The town of Ascoli was built from ancient Roman buildings, which is why its churches are built on the ruins of Roman temples, a mixture of medieval and medieval palaces. Renaissance architecture.
Lella Palumbi, a tour guide in Ascoli, said the Romans were not the first residents to settle in this town.
This place originally belonged to the Piceni – an ancient tribe whose territory stretched across much of the modern Marche region, from the city of Pesaro in northern Italy to the city of Chieti. They founded the city a century before the capital Rome was born.
According to Palumbi, the Piceni were great warriors and the Romans quickly sought to become allies. But Piceni’s demands for citizenship sparked a years-long war, culminating when the Romans took Ascoli, razed the town, and decided to rebuild from scratch.
“That was when Ascoli travertine was born,” says Palumbi.
A form of sedimentary limestone, travertine is formed when hot springs deposit calcium carbonate minerals. This type of stone has quite good elasticity thanks to organisms attached to the outside such as algae, moss and bacteria.
The Romans used the stone from the Tivoli quarries to construct their most important buildings and monuments in the capital Rome, they even called travertine “lapis tiburtinus” or “stone from Tivoli “.
After conquering the town of Ascoli, the Romans noticed similar quarries a few miles away, off the ancient Via Salaria.
They used those stones to build a sparkling new city, proving their strength against their fiercest enemies. Palumbi said, this place is like a “miniature Rome”.
2,000 years of development
The Roman town of Ascoli survived and flourished, but during the Middle Ages, the residents decided to rebuild. Instead of using new stone, they upgraded buildings with travertine from 1,000 years ago to build a modern city.
“Everything is recycled – we took apart Roman ruins to build a medieval city,” Palumbi said.
“The ancient Romans were always trying to save time and energy, so instead of going to the mountains to mine travertine, they would use what was already there – this town is basically a mine stone”.
Having undergone many more “upgrades” during the Renaissance, Ascoli still only uses travertine, which has made this town an architectural heritage that has never changed.
v
“Ascoli is the only city in the world made entirely of travertine,” said Stefano Papetti, director of five museums in the town who serves as Ascoli’s scientific consultant.
“Ascoli is different from other Italian art cities – which are mainly built of brick and then “covered in travertine” or marble. Here, whether Roman, Medieval, Renaissance or later, all architecture is made of solid blocks of travertine from the mountains surrounding the town of Ascoli.
Town of art
Ascoli’s Pinacoteca Civica art gallery features works by Titian, Guido Reni and Carlo Crivelli – a 15th-century Venetian painter who worked in the Marche region and died there.
This town is even famous for “Olive ascolane” – a dish with large, juicy olives stuffed with meat and fried to a crisp. However, few things can compete with the travertine buildings of Ascoli Piceno.
Piazza Arringo, the cathedral square, is surrounded by stately Renaissance buildings – including the 12th-century town hall, which houses the art gallery.
Next door, Piazza del Popolo, another main square, is surrounded by Renaissance buildings, overhauled in the early 1500s.
Paved entirely with travertine, these are squares that glow at night, when artfully placed street lamps make them look like gateways melting into the ground, a shimmering mirage .
According to residents of Ascoli: “Travertine can change color depending on sunlight and weather. For example, they can turn pink in the sun, and in bad weather, they will turn gray.”
The rocks protect the city
Travertine is relatively soft when first extracted, which allows people to sculpt it. This is one of the reasons Ascoli’s buildings have elaborately carved portals and facades, and many Renaissance houses even have mottoes engraved on their doorways.
Over time and oxidation, this rock will harden into rocks so resistant that the buildings of the town of Ascoli have survived countless earthquakes over the centuries.
It was not destroyed by the great earthquake of 1703, nor was it severely affected by the 2016 earthquake that leveled the nearby town of Amatrice.
Palumbi believes that the ancient Romans knew about earthquakes and built Ascoli to protect against them. Over the centuries, Ascoli’s itinerant quarries – found in three areas around the city – have been an important part of the town’s economy.
Architects in the Middle Ages and Renaissance used the Roman quarries on the Via Salaria. But in the 20th century, many quarries opened up in the hills surrounding the city – especially on Colle San Marco. However, a few quarries closed in the late 1980s, partly due to the economic crisis, partly due to environmental protection laws.
“I grew up with stones,” said Giuliano Giuliani, a stone carver in the town of Ascoli. “I live in a house made of travertine and walk on travertine streets every day.”
“To me, travertine is the most beautiful rocks, they have stratification, they have their own history, they have stories over time, from the streams that deposited the rocks, to the creatures that once clung to them. pillars and leave behind fossils. It is a story of thousands of years.”
What would the town of Ascoli Piceno be without travertine? “There will be nothing left here,” Giuliano affirmed. “Travertine means everything.”
