| Description: |
Little is known about the origins of this small medieval town lying at 800m above sea-level. What is certain is that the site was inhabited by a monks community before the Farfa Abbey was founded.
The earliest pieces of information about Smerillo´s foundation date from the IX century. The remains of the castle walls and of the medieval stronghold, which once made up the “Castrum Smerilli”, are very well preserved, especially the well-restored entrance to the town known as ‘Porta Nord’. In the XVI century it was subsumed in the possessions of the Papal State, before the unification of the new Italian state. Smerillo, too, like other similarly well-positioned spots of the Marche, provides some outstanding natural sights and, like Cingoli, is called the ´Balcony of the Marche´. A remarkable feature of the town is its ´Fessa´, that is a crack in the pliocenic rock with rare fossils, on display in the local “Museo dei Fossili e dei Minerali”, visited all year round by palaeontologists and tourists alike. The village also houses the ‘Pinacoteca d´Arte Contemporanea’ and the ´Museo Pinacoteca dell´Arte dei Bambini’; it is therefore hardly surprising to know that in 2003 it was declared a ´cittadella ideale´ (´ideal fortified town´) of poetry and has since functioned as a kind of spiritual meeting-point of the international poetic world.
Text by Fabio Santilli
Translation by Gianfranco Martorano |