MARCHE

The 'Marche' (plural, originally from ''le marche de Ancona'', referring to the March of Ancona) is one of the 20 Regions of Italy.

It is located in the Central area of the country, bordering Emilia-Romagna and the republic of San Marino to the north, Tuscany to the north-west, Umbria to west, Abruzzo and Lazio to the south, and the Adriatic Sea to the east. Except for river valleys and the often very narrow coastal strip, the land is hilly. In the 19th century a railway from Bologna to Brindisi linked the Marche along the coast-line of the entire territory. Inland, the mountainous nature of the region, even today, allows little communication north and south, except by rough roads over the passes.

Contents

History

Provinces

Economy

Politics

Demographics

See also

External links

History

The Marche were known in the ancient time as the Picenum territory. The coastal area was occupied by the Senones, a Gaul tribe. They were conquered by the Romans in the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC. They founded numerous colonies in the areas, connecting them to Rome through the Via Flaminia and the Via Salaria. Ascoli was a seat of the Italic resistance during the Social War (91–88 BC).
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the region was invaded by the Goths. After the Gothic War, it was part of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna (Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, Rimini, and Senigallia formed the so-called Pentapolis). After the fall of the Exarchate they were briefly a Lombard possession, but was conquered by Charlemagne in the late 8th century. In the 9th-11th centuries the marches of Camerino, Fermo and Ancona were created, whence the modern name.
The Marche were thenceforth nominally part of the Papal States, but most of the territory was under local lords, while the major cities ruled themselves as free communes. In the 12th century the commune of Ancona resisted both to the imperial authority of Frederick Barbarossa and to those of the Republic of Venice, and was a maritime republic of its own. An effective attempt of restoring the Papal suzerainty by the legate Gil de Albornoz in the 14th century, was not long-lived.
During the Renaissance the region was mostly characterized by the struggle between rival aristocratic families, such as the houses of Malatesta of Rimini, Pesaro and Fano, and that of the Montefeltro of Urbino. From the 16th century the Marche were again firmly part of the Papal States: the last independent entity, Duchy of Urbino, was dissolved in 1631. In the Napoleonic period the short lived Republic of Ancona was created in 1797, after which the region was merged with the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Italy (1808-1813), to which followed a short occupation by Joachim Murat. Thenceforth the Marche remained under Papal rule until November 4 1860, when they were annexed to the unified Kingdom of Italy by a plebiscite.

Provinces

The Marche are divided into five provinces:

★ Ancona

★ Ascoli Piceno

★ Fermo

★ Macerata

★ Pesaro e Urbino

Economy

In a traditional ''mezzadria'' system, under which products are equally divided between the owners and the cultivators of the land, the rather unproductive soil and difficult terrain was fairly highly cultivated. In modern times the Marche developed the industrial sectors of shoes, paper, furniture, shipbuilding. The port of Ancona was the only really good harbour, the other small harbours were used by fishing fleets: the Marche furnished a large contingent of sailors to the Italian navy.

Politics

Marche form, along with Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria, the Italian "Red Quadrilateral", a strongly left-wing area. In the April 2006 elections, the people of Marche gave 55% of their votes to Romano Prodi.

Demographics

As of 2006, the Italian national institute of statistics (ISTAT) estimated that 81,890 foreign-born immigrants live in Marche, equal to 5.3% of total regional population.
Towns of Marche with a population of 50,000 or more:

City	Population (2006 est.)
Ancona	101,862
Pesaro	91,955
Fano	62,455
Ascoli Piceno	51,732

See also

★ March of Ancona

★ Papal States

★ Duchy of Urbino

★ House of Malatesta

★ Duchy of Camerino

External links

★ Official regional website

★ iMarche: Accomodations, gallery, history and more

★ Map of Marche

★ Marche Voyager

★ Food and life in Le Marche

★ Drawing on Experience, a sketchbook of Le Marche

★ Marche Historical Picture Gallery