Off to Ascoli Piceno

Saturday, April 11, 2009. The weather this morning is back to that Italian version of sunshine that seems so golden, as if the very air were being polished. Good thing too, for we are off on a fairly long drive to Ascoli Piceno, in the Marche region of Italy. All the needed roads are major ones and we arrive without once getting lost or confused(!). Ascoli (as nearly everyone seems to call it) is an attractive city of about 50,000 people and has many reasons for a visit. But what brings us here today is that Stone’s father’s “people” emigrated from Ascoli. We also seek the rather famous (in Italy, at least) “olive all'Ascolana, which is a “tenera ascolana” olive stuffed with a variety of meats, rolled in bread crumbs and fried.

Ascoli proves to be a very cool city with two nice big piazzas, a lot of culture, a flowing river, over 20 churches of historical note and many charming medieval streets. It didn’t take us long to discover our olives, for they are seemingly sold everywhere, and were as deliciously unique as we had hoped.

We had a very nice lunch at Ristorante Enoteca Kursaal, which is a two building enterprise, combining a wine shop and a restaurant, which we kind of stumbled upon while looking for something else. As seemingly always, the meal was terrific. We then went on a Figlia-led tour of Ascoli. She had done some research the night before on the internet and provided us all with a lovely and educational two hour walk around town. Interestingly, during our walk we saw two Christian edifices that could not be more different.

The first was the great Gothic church of San Francesco. It can hardly be missed, sitting magnificently at one end of Piazza del Popolo, is filled with art and artifacts, and that day had scores of tourists admiring its history, architecture and art. On the other hand, the Little Temple of St. Emidio, where the saint died, sits across the Tronto river, and must be looked for in earnest. In fact, we missed it on our first trip up the street where it squats, virtually unnoticed in neighborhood full of traffic. Here there is room for perhaps a score of people total. The little building has but one painting and one artifact. The painting shows St. Emidio being beheaded (303 AD) and the artifact is a rough stone on which the martyrdom occurred. There are two little bouquets of flowers on the floor.

But since St. Emidio is the patron saint of "Ascoli," as most Italians refer to this city, the good saint also has a massive cathedral in the Piazza Arringo. Oddly enough considering the time of our visit, St. Emidio is invoked in all of Italy as protector against earthquakes.

We left Ascoli thinking it would well be worth another visit. It is wonderfully located by the river, with mountains near by, and had the charm of Assisi combined with the culture and “vibe” of a larger city. To get back to Penne we had to go through Pescara, so we decided to stop and have dinner. On this Saturday night it was very difficult to find a parking place, the city was simply agog with people, but we finally find an outlying spot. We walked a good mile to Figlia's favorite local spot, a nondescript pizza place down by the river. Here we had some very nice grilled treats, highlighted by an Abruzzo classic -- arrosticini, which is little bits of grilled lamb on skewers. Delicious and fun to eat. After dinner we walked down the “main street of several names,” window shopping and looking at the people, then drove back to Penne via the “roadway of many twists and curves.”