Adriatic views: Pesaro

Pesaro is a city balancing between the Adriatic and the Apennines, people-friendly and bycicle-friendly. Our Fabio Fiori invites us to discover it on pedals, moving beyond its squares to venture into the streets and paths that descend to the sea

Pesaro, city of music and bicycles between the Adriatic and the Apennines, blue and green, past and present. A dynamic balance, like that of those who play and those who pedal. Without forgetting that the bicycle has its own musicality and that everyone  must find their own rhythm on pedals. Just as every musician must pedal a lot, to express themselves at their best.

Therefore, the locals ride their bikes and guests should do the same, considering the very convenient railway option of bike transport or rental, dedicating at least a moment to music.

Teatro and Casa Rossini are places of worship, with rich concert and cultural calendars, but there are other places that resonate, in the relationship with the natural elements that are very lively in Pesaro.

First of all, lights, winds and Adriatic waters, which require meteorological attention and sentimental predisposition. To build a relationship with Pesaro, it is not enough to walk in Piazza del Popolo and the streets of the city centre or look out to sea in Piazza della Libertà, where the Sphere by Arnoldo Pomodoro gives an idea of ​​​​relationship with the world in the eternal becoming of three blues: of the fountain, of the sky and of the sea.

To see and hear Pesaro better, you have to get on a saddle or set out on a journey to broaden your horizons. You have to go at least as far as the lighthouse Faro del San Bartolo, to see from above Baia Flaminia, the mouth of the Foglia and the canal port, with its dam that is an invitation to discover the sea.

But the lighthouse is also the first stop on the Panoramic Road, one of Pesaro’s two magnificent marine wings. A naturalistic wing, the living cliff of Monte San Bartolo that makes your imagination fly over the Adriatic, because when seen from up there it becomes even more ethereal. Already at the lighthouse, the city is forgotten and nature takes over again, at least in our fantasies.

From the lighthouse to Gabicce Monte, it is about twenty kilometres inside the Monte San Bartolo Natural Park, which is a fascinating mix of scrub and cultivated land. Thus, the park’s roads and paths cross the yellows of the broom and wheat in spring, the ochres of the oak groves and vineyards in autumn.

Roads and paths from which deviations branch off like a comb descending to the sea where, especially off season, the narrow, stony beaches are small paradises populated by wooden creatures that offer shady comfort in summer and fairytale-like comfort in winter.

Roads and paths that lead to small villages nestled on the Adriatic precipice: Santa Maria, Casteldimezzo, Fiorenzuola di Focara, Gabicce.

Four stages full of views of the sea and history, of this cliff that marks the border between the northern fluvial-lagoon Adriatic and the central-southern torrential Adriatic.

Everyone will find a bench or a stone, where they can sit to look at the sea and maybe read a page, in the silence that the park offers.

The other wing of Pesaro is close to the sea, on the narrow beach that lies between the shoreline and the other cliff, the dead one of Monte Ardizio, which goes south to Fano. A dozen kilometres that, in addition to being the first unforgettable railway window on the Adriatic, are one of the most beautiful stretches of the Adriatic Cycle Route.

You can pedal in complete tranquility a few metres from the shoreline and the sea is always there, peeping out and inviting you to a refreshing stop in the summer or a meditative one in the other seasons.

In part they are beaches left over from the forced bathing that affects much of the Italian coast and, in their wildness, they offer a precious marine freedom. They are beaches where the colourful silene and the maritime cakile bloom. Beaches where you can read Fiori del mare (Flowers of the sea), written by Gianni D’Elia who is the contemporary poetic singer of these shores. Sulla riva dell’epoca (By the era) and Bassa stagione (Low Season) are two more of his titles that convey Adriatic atmospheres.

It is a dreamlike and timeless Pesaro that, with equal poetry, Mauro Santini, a director who makes landscape films, paraphrasing Italo Calvino, has been portraying for more than twenty years. In Santini's films as in the books of Francesco Biamonti, one of his favorite writers, the human blurs in the landscape, emotions transfigure in the shadow and in the light, voids and silences weigh more than fullness and words.

Let us be accompanied by this visionary flâneur on his Lungomare adriatico, one of his small great films visible online, seven variations on a wave, to experience daily transcendences.