Few countries in the world are suffused with such a strong sense of historical continuity as Italy. From the myths that surround the birth of the Etruscan civilization to the foundation of United Italy in the 19thC, past and present are inextricably linked in a seamless web that stretches back over three millennia.

This short account provides a thread to guide you through the labyrinth of this complex story. You’ll find more detailed local history in the individual town pages.

Before the Romans

Our knowledge of the early peoples of the Marche is hazy and often draws from the unreliable writings of later Roman historians. 

The most important of the tribes who first inhabited the region in any numbers were the Piceni, who lived on the eastern seaboard of the Marche. Up in the mountains their place was taken by the Umbri tribes who also dwelt in the neighbouring region now know as Umbria.

Both tribes have left us few relics of their passage. Only with the Etruscans do we find early inhabitants who left their mark on Italian history but their influence in the Marche was marginal.

Ancient Rome

With the expulsion in 509 BC of Tarquinius Superbus, the last of the Etruscan monarchs, the new Republic of Rome gradually began to make its presence felt. Already weakened by attacks from the Greek colonists in southern Italy and by Celtic inroads from the north, the Etruscans soon came under the sway of Rome. The beginning of the end was marked by the Roman conquest of the Etruscan city of Veio in 396 BC.

With the construction of the great highways such as the Via Flaminia, Roman dominion across Italy was consolidated. Under the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, the Marche was divided – the northern stretches formed part of the Roman Umbria, while the south was known as Picenum.

Arrival of the Barbarians

In AD 476, Rome, already weakened by the split between the Western and Eastern Empires and the first forays by Goths and Vandals from the north, finally fell to the barbarian warrior Odoacer. His reign as the first King of Italy was short-lived, however, with the arrival in 489 of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who established a 33-year rule of relative tranquility in Italy.

On his death, the Eastern Emperor Justinian in Constantinople tried to revive imperial power in Italy through his celebrated generals Belisarius and Narses. Although they finally managed to topple the Gothic King Totila in 552  the deciding battle took place at the Furlo Gorge in the Marche, central Italy was in no fit state to resist yet another invasion from the north, this time from the Lombards in 568.

For 200 years these warriors from the Danube valley held loose control over much of central Italy, ruling from Lucca and Spoleto. Only in the northern Marche and part of Umbria did the Byzantine powers manage to keep a toehold under the protection of the Exarchate of Ravenna.

The Holy Roman Empire

Although converted to Christianity by Pope Gregory the Great, the Lombards were regarded as unwelcome guests by later popes. It was Pope Stephen II who first hit on the idea of calling in foreign help to oust the Lombards and in 754 Pepin the Short entered Italy at the head of his Frankish army. The expulsion of the Lombards proved difficult and it was only under Pepin’s son, the great Charlemagne, that the work was completed.

As a reward to his Frankish champion, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor. Although at the time it was little more than an honorary title, the Holy Roman Empire thus founded was to last on and off for a thousand years and to become the focus of continual strife between the rival claims of successive popes and emperors. Although Charlemagne’s empire flourished, it depended too heavily on his guiding hand; on his death in 814, things rapidly fell apart.

Italy was again plunged into anarchy with imperial officials setting themselves up as local despots. Increased security only returned with the revival of the power of the Holy Roman Empire under the Saxon King, Otto I. Trade and industry began to flourish and, while Emperor and Pope argued over who should rule, many of the cities of central Italy, the Marche included, had their first taste of independence.

Although they paid lip service to one side or the other, in truth they found themselves able to decide their own future. Bereft of effective central government, these early city states bred fierce local patriotism and ceaseless rivalry with their neighbours.

Guelphs & Ghibellines

The rivalry between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire came to a head under the rule of the brilliant medieval German Hohenstaufen Emperor, Frederick II, the man who earned the title Stupor Mundi for his dazzling talents. If you visit Jesi, you’ll be able to see the place where he was born in a tent. Although he almost succeeded in creating a united Italy under his banner, his death in 1250 marked the eclipse of German imperial power in the peninsular.

The Marche, like the rest of central Italy, was deeply bound up in this conflict, with loyalties tied either to the Guelph or Ghibelline parties. The supporters of the papacy took their name from Frederick’s rival for the empire, the Welf Otto, while the imperialists became known as Ghibellines from the Italianized Hohenstaufen battle-cry “Hie Weibling”. 

Behind the simple struggle between the two powers lay a deeper political battle between the new middle class of merchants and artisans, who allied themselves with the Guelphs, and the old feudal aristocracy who saw that the tide of democracy could best be held in check by the Emperor’s Ghibelline faction. 

Into this fundamental struggle all the warring factions of central Italy poured their energies. The Guelph cause can be said to have triumphed with the arrival of the French under Charles of Anjou in the middle of the 13th century at the invitation of Pope Urban IV; from now on France rather than Germany was to be the dominant foreign power in Italy. 

The Guelph and Ghibelline labels, however, lingered on for centuries. Long after they had lost their original significance, they remained as a cover for just about any difference of opinion, even as an excuse to settle old scores.

Despots and Republics

The absence of the papacy in Avignon from 1305-77, the subsequent Great Schism which saw up to three candidates claiming the Throne of St Peter, and the arrival of the Black Death in 1348, all provided fertile soil for the flowering of local despotism across the Marche. 

The careers of these petty tyrants were briefly interrupted by the arrival of the ruthless Cardinal Albornoz, sent by the Avignon popes to reimpose their rule over the Papal States, and finally went into decline with the restoration of the papacy in Rome in 1421 under the determined Pope Martin V.

Peace before the Storm

The apogee of the Renaissance in the middle of the 15th century was marked by a period of relative stability across central Italy. This was in no small part thanks to the Italian League, a defensive treaty between the major powers in Italy that held in check both the lesser Italian states and foreign invaders. 

It is against this background that many centres of art and learning flourished; perhaps, none better illustrates the splendour of these lesser courts than that founded by Duke Federico of Montefeltro at Urbino.

Foreign Domination and the Papal States

But the days of this prototype of a united Italy were numbered. The individual interests of the leading states soon took priority over the common good, and the arrival of Charles VIII from France in 1494, at the invitation of Milan in their quarrel with Naples, marked the dissolution of the League and the opening gambit in the Wars of Italy. Although the French invasion convulsed central Italy, two years later Charles was back in France with his Italian conquests lost.

But the French intervention had turned the thoughts of another great European power towards Italian conquests – Spain. As the 16th century dawned and the Italian Renaissance took root across Europe, central Italy along with the rest of the peninsular became a battleground on which the rival claims to Italian hegemony between Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain were tested. And with the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, over a hundred and fifty years of Spanish domination of Italy began.

With the Spanish holding the rest of Italy in check, the Papacy was free to consolidate its rule over its own possessions which included the Marches – while the centre of Italian culture moved to Counter- Reformation Rome, the Papal States were left to languish under the dead hand of ecclesiastical bureaucrats. 

Napoleon & The Risorgimento

The shock waves of the French Revolution of 1789 were felt in Italy and helped to fan the first flames of libertarianism that were to culminate in 1860 with the birth of United Italy. But first it had to submit to the Napoleonic invasion of 1796. 

Across Italy, Bonaparte first set up client republics – with the Papal States transformed into the Roman Republic – then the more draconian Kingdom of Italy. The collapse of the regime with the fall of Napoleon was as rapid as its arrival. But, despite its brevity, Napoleonic rule awoke central Italy and the rest of the country from its long slumbers and fostered the rebirth of nationalism. 

Under the Piedmont King Victor Emmanuel, his wily prime minister, Cavour and the heroic if maverick general, Garibaldi, United Italy became a reality. In 1859 the Italian tricolour flew from the Fortezza of Florence and the last Grand Duke, Leopold II, abdicated. A year later large parts of Italy opted to join the new Kingdom of Piedmont. 

The Papacy, however, proved more intransigent to the onslaught of the Risorgimento and it was only by force that the Marche managed to break free from the Papal States in the same year. It was a full ten years later that Rome finally fell, in 1870. From here on the history of the Marche is but part of the story of modern Italy.

©Peter Greene/le-marche.com