The year 2006, as with wines, was also a banner vintage in Italy for the visual arts. Florence alone was host to four small but significant exhibitions. Proceeding southward, the fortunate traveler would have found, in the refurbished stables of Rome’s Quirinal Palace, a comprehensive and exciting gathering of Antonello da Messina’s paintings, together with those of some of his contemporaries. Still further south in Naples, the portraiture of Titian was displayed in all its grandeur in the magnificent setting of Capodimonte. But then, Florence-Rome-Naples is the granddaddy of all Italian itineraries. Were our fortunate traveler to have had the curiosity and stamina for a detour east, to Fabriano, he would have been even more richly rewarded.

No matter how one approaches this enchanting small town in the hills of the Marches, the landscape flows by, verdant, bucolic, and unspoiled. And were it not for the rapid progress of two autostrade bearing down from two directions, the old roads are still all that a sporting driver could wish for.

Fabriano, like so many towns in central Italy, emerged from the Middle Ages independent, industrious, and belligerent, and, like so many of its neighbors large and small, was ruled by a succession of petty tyrants who, with uneven results, attempted to establish dynastic rule. Eventually, the entire region comprising the Marches and Umbria became part of the Papal States, relegating Fabriano to the role of a comfortable provincial backwater. Although today the town is a bustling hive, producing