Montalto delle Marche is located in the province of Ascoli Piceno, between the Aso and Tesino rivers, 30 minutes from the Adriatic Sea and the Sibillini Mountains range. In addition to the town’s early medieval historic center, the town also includes the hamlets of Porchia and Patrignone with their castles, and the Valdaso hamlet of Montalto, the garden of Le Marche.
Historically, Montalto’s roots go back to the Neolithic period, but it became a protagonist of history with the birth of its most illustrious fellow citizen Felice Peretti-Pope Sixtus V (1521/1590)-who made it, in a short time, the landmark of the Piceno region.
The hamlet of Porchia is distinguished by its ancient medieval tower with a hexagonal plan and the Church of St. Lucia with its characteristic sloping bell tower. The hamlet of Patrignone, also with its castle, has an urban structure characterized by ups and downs and narrow streets from the medieval era that has earned it the nickname “little Urbino,” which is also rich in valuable pictorial-artistic testimonies by local artists such as Pagani and the Bonfinis. Even in the Valdaso of Montalto there is no shortage of evidence of the village’s great history, with the Mill of Sixtus V, a very rare example of a fortified mill. Montalto is a village with an ancient history and a young spirit, in fact the points of interest in the historic town center can also be enjoyed independently thanks to a system of qr codes and audio guides that tell the story and the main points of interest of the City including the Co-cathedral dedicated to the Assumption, the noble Palazzo Paradisi now also home to temporary exhibitions and art residences, Pericle Fazzini’s monument dedicated to Sixtus V, and again Palazzo Sacconi, of the family that gave birth to another illustrious Montaltese fellow citizen, architect Giuseppe Sacconi, designer of the Altar of the Fatherland in Rome.