Ciao

It’s a gorgous day in the Apennines and I’m sitting here at Col Buttero writing with a glass of fizz and my legs in the sun. My last post was all about the upper, old part of Apecchio. This one is on the lower, and older part.

Let’s start with some food though. They take food very seriously here and there are several places you can go. Civico 14+5 on the main street does good local mountain food and the owner runs the vivereapecchio.com website that promotes the town. This is a very good website for finding out what it is happeneing in town but unless you understand Italian, you’ll have to use Google translate. They normally have tables outside but this can’t be relied on so if you want to eat outside head over to Il Greco for a pizza. It’s only a few doors down the street, on the corner, and the restaurant and the outside seating area are on opposite sides of the road from eachother. We go there a lot and take friends that are staying with us. Everybody loves these pizzas. It’s probably the only place in Apecchio that does a loyalty stamp card. Buy ten, get one free.

If you walk back towards, and past, Bar Dante on the main road you will find the 11th century templar church; Chiesa Templare di Santa Lucia.

The church has been authenticated as a Templar church by an expert association in Urbino and it is full to the brim with symbols. If you want to know more about it, visit the friends of The History of Apecchio Facebook page. https://bit.ly/2kteg8O

A Priest in the 60s, who was apparently slightly mad, sold the church to someone who in turn, a few years ago, was just about to sell it to Anas, the road fixing company here in Italy, when our local historian Leonello Bei who showed us around, managed to stop the sale and the subsequent demolishion of the church. They had wanted to take it down to widen the road. He found all the Templar symbols and got the church authenticated with Urbino as a Templar church. This is the man who runs the Historical Society here and he does all this work, keeps all the Apecchio history alive just because he loves it.

When you leave the church, turn right, and wander down the road towards the river. This used to be the main road into Apecchio in the very olden days. The humpback bridge you’re heading towards, was the only route into town and along the mountain roads towards Citta di Castello.

The painter Raphael regularly travelled through Apecchio on his way to Umbria, and in the background of his painting Madonna of the Goldfinch which hangs at the Uffizi gallery in Florence, you can clearly see our bridge in the background.

If your travels brings you to our little part of Italy, I do hope you’ll pop into Apecchio and have a little wander around.

Ttfn

Marie