Numana and Sirolo: The Twin Jewels of the Riviera del Conero

If you've spent any time researching the Riviera del Conero, you've almost certainly come across the names Numana and Sirolo: two small towns sitting side by side at the southern foot of Monte Conero. Once more separate and independent, their rapid development over the last 50 years means that nowadays the two towns essentially make up a single larger one. You can walk from the main piazza of Numana to that of Sirolo in about 10-15 minutes, never having to leave an urban setting. And yet, each preserves a distinct character, and old rivalries between "Numanesi" and "Sirolesi" surprisingly still play a role in everyday life, even among younger generations. I've lived between these two towns for most of my life, so let me tell you what I know about what makes them special — and why, if you really want to understand either of them, you need to see them from the sea.

A History Written in Stone and Sea

Numana: From Picene Port to Fishing Village

Numana is old. Genuinely, prehistorically old. The first human settlements here date back to the Neolithic era, and by the Iron Age the area had become a significant centre of the Picene civilisation, which dominated the central Adriatic coast from roughly the 9th to the 3rd century BC. The Picenes were traders as much as warriors, and Numana's natural harbour made it one of their most important ports — a hub for the exchange of goods with Greek merchants who sailed up the Adriatic from their southern colonies.

The Greeks recognised a good thing when they saw it, and so by the 5th century BC, Numana had been drawn into Athenian trade networks, redistributing Greek ceramics, wine, and olive oil into the interior of the Italian peninsula. The Antiquarium Statale — Numana's small but remarkable archaeological museum, completely renovated just a few years ago — holds the evidence of all this: among its most extraordinary pieces is the treasure of the so-called Queen of Sirolo, a 6th-century BC Picene noblewoman whose tomb, discovered in the I Pini necropolis (which lies just between Numana and Sirolo, and it is worth visiting too), contained some of the finest funerary objects ever found in the region. It is a small collection but it is stuff that would not look out of place in the British Museum. You should go visit it when you've got a chance.

Roman domination eventually absorbed Numana, and the town appears in medieval documents under the name Humana — a name still visible in the Italian word Umana, occasionally used to this day by the older folks (my 94-year-old grandfather-in-law regularly uses this name). For centuries it was one of the most prosperous commercial hubs of the whole region, until in 558 AD, a catastrophic earthquake struck the town with devastating force — and a substantial section of it, built on the clay foundations of the clifftop, simply slid into the sea. What had been streets, buildings, and harbor infrastructure disappeared beneath the Adriatic. As a matter of fact, it is very likely that lots of old buildings and other items of archaeological significance today sit underneath the contemporary Port of Numana, forever lost.

This was not merely a disaster to be recovered from: it marked the beginning of a long, slow decline. Numana, once counted among the cities of the maritime Pentapolis — the five most important port towns of the central Adriatic — was gradually reduced to a modest fishing village. A second major earthquake in 1298 compounded the damage, and the 14th century brought three separate sackings. The town that exists today is, in a real sense, a survivor — built on the ruins of something larger and more powerful that now lies on the seafloor below it. When you walk along the clifftop of Numana Alta and look down at the water from the lookout point of La Torre, you are looking at a graveyard of the town's former self.

In 1404 the now modest village of Numana came under the administrative control of Ancona, and for centuries its identity settled into that of a quiet fishing village perched on a cliff above a small harbor, and it kept surviving thanks to its close relationship with the sea until the twentieth century.

A depiction of Numana by artist Filippo Boni, painted sometime in the mid-1800s, the sheer clay cliff is where the old town fell in the sea in the sixth century. Today, the port of Numana occupies the space shown in this picture. Note the fishing boat with a red Vela al Terzo.

Fishermen in Numana, in the 1950s, fishing with the traditional Sciabega, a semi-circular net that was drawn out to sea by boats and then pulled back in towards the beach. Still today, the term "Sciabegotto" is used by older folks of towns surrounding Numana as a derogatory term, meaning "simpleton", to indicate the humble origins of the fishermen of Numana.

It is only with the explosion of tourism — from the early "pioneers" in the 1940s (mostly families from Rome who discovered the beauty of the Adriatic coast and choose it as their summer destination, mine included) to the Italian economic boom of the 1960s — that Numana (and Sirolo as well) turned from a modest fishing village to a hub for summer tourism, a phenomenon that brought a lot of wealth and promoted the infrastructural development of whole new districts to satisfy the new demand of modern summer houses.

Nowadays, there are only few professional fishermen left at the port of Numana, where you can go and buy the fresh catch of the day very early in the morning. You can visit one of the most distinctive corners of the town -- La Costarella -- which is a long, broad staircase between two rows of tiny houses, connecting the lower port area with the higher Numana Alta one. And if you squint hard enough you can travel back in time to the 1920s, and see exhausted fishermen getting back from their night-time hunt out on the Adriatic, climbing those stairs toward their family home, their wives waiting for them to deliver large wicker baskets full of mackerel, sea bass, mullet, sea bream, or many other varieties of fish.

A picture of La Costarella, before the downward slope was turned into a staircase, probably taken around the 1940s.

Sirolo: The Fortified Jewel

Sirolo's story runs parallel to Numana's for much of antiquity — the Picenes were here too, and the same Greeks passed through, although the neighboring Numana was a far more important centre due to its port — and really acquires its distinctive identity around the middle ages. While Numana gravitated toward the sea and its port, and was severely damaged by natural disasters, Sirolo turned inward and upward, becoming a fortified hilltop stronghold whose walls and gates, dating to the 11th and 12th centuries, are still partially visible today. The name of the town itself likely traces back to a military commander named Sirius, who was granted this territory around 560 AD as a reward for his role in the Byzantine victory over the Goths in the Piceno region.

The medieval identity of Sirolo is largely the creation of one family: the Conti Cortesi, nobles of Frankish-Germanic origin, who established their lordship over the town in the 11th century and built the fortified castle — the Castrum Syroli — that still defines the historic centre today. The church of San Nicola di Bari has dominated the central piazza since the 1200s, and its belfry is one of the most recognizable landmarks when looking up from the sea.

The church of San Nicola di Bari, in Sirolo, in a picture from the early 1900s.

The Conti Cortesi left their mark in more than stone: in 1038 they donated the land on the summit of Monte Conero to the Benedictine monks, who built the first abbey of San Pietro al Conero there — the roots of the monastery that still stands today, although it has now been converted into a Hotel. It is still worth walking (or driving) up to the top of the Monte Conero to visit the romanesque church of San Pietro al Conero, which was part of the monastery and is still active. And the view from the scenic lookout points on the Monte Conero is really a sight to behold.

The gate of the Benedictine monastery, and the church of San Pietro al Conero, as seen in the early 1900s. Today, most of the wall has collapsed, but the church is still in excellent condition.

In 1225, the family ceded Sirolo and all their other castles to the Comune of Ancona — in exchange, reportedly, for Anconese noble titles — and the town thereafter followed the fortunes of its powerful neighbour. It proved a resilient place: the castle withstood a siege by the mercenary captain Fra' Moriale in 1353 and another by the Malatesta in 1413, earning a reputation as one of the most formidable strongholds on the entire Adriatic coast.

A picture of Sirolo from the early 1900s

In more recent times, while Numana has always lived off the sea, Sirolo has shared its identity and drawn its livelihood from both the sea and the Monte Conero: its forests and its hills, so that it has always been the more agriculture-oriented of the two and the Sirolesi were more likely to be shepherds and woodcutters than the Numanesi -- although they too had a small fleet of fishermen departing daily from the Spiaggia Urbani, just below the town. In particular, Sirolo had a number of very active stone quarries, both on the Monte Conero and near the shore, like the famous Cava Davanzali -- right next to the famous Due Sorelle -- where the white limestone of the Monte Conero was cut and turned into construction material: most of the older buildings in Numana and Sirolo are made with the distinctively white pietra del Conero. What is left of this quarry can only be seen from the sea, when taking a boat tour of the Riviera del Conero.

The Davanzali stone quarry: a small track, cranes and steam engines were used to load the rocks on boats, then carried to either Numana or Ancona to be used as construction materials.

Two Towns, Two Personalities

What still strikes me most about Numana and Sirolo is how differently they've aged into the modern era, even under the same pressure to evolve and adapt as tourist destinations. Sirolo has remained compact and more self-contained — its historic centre sits above the beaches, connected by a winding road, and the town has maintained a certain dignity and restraint. It bills itself as the Perla del Conero — the Pearl of the Conero — and takes its architecture and civic aesthetics seriously. The panoramic terrace overlooking the Adriatic on a clear evening, with the white limestone of Monte Conero to the north and the curve of the coast stretching south toward Numana, is one of the most genuinely beautiful views in this part of Italy.

Numana is livelier, more layered, more contradictory. Numana Alta — the old town on the clifftop, from the piazza to the lookout point of La Torre — has a quieter, more historical character, although during the summer it is made more active by evening street shows, concerts and events. Numana Bassa — the lower town, built around the harbour and the broad beach stretching south toward its more recent and touristic hub of Marcelli — is where summer tourism does its loudest work. It can feel like two different towns sharing a name.

I won't lie to you: there is a bittersweet side to this beauty. Like many small towns all over Italy, both towns are slowly hemorrhaging their younger population. Once second- or third- generation property owners realized how profitable the tourism business could be, what had been for several generations family homes were renovated, re-structured, and turned into summer homes for tourists. Today, Numana and Sirolo have just about 3,000 inhabitants each during the winter, but in the summer this number increases tenfold. This means that in the summer everything is bustling with activity: all restaurants and hotels are open, there are events every evening, and tourists from all parts of Italy and Europe are enjoying the hot mornings at the beach and the warm evenings dining out...while in the winter, four houses out of five are closed and empty, businesses are shut for the low season, and the streets are deserted. No wonder younger people choose to live elsewhere, where there's both more abundant work opportunities and a livelier social life.

Born and raised in Rome, I started visiting Numana as a tourist (or as they say in Numana a "bagnante" — a "swimmer", i.e. "those who come here to swim", this is how tourists were initially seen). My great-grandmother bought a house in the center of Numana in the 1930s and since then my family has always lived between Rome and Numana. I've always liked the contrast of experiencing the town in the summer (when I'd spend all of my three months of school holidays here), and in the winter, when I'd come for shorter holidays or serendipitous weekends: on the one hand the warm, sunny, loud and bustling Numana in its high season, on the other the cold, misty, sleepy seaside town during the winter, when it actually felt (for a city boy like me) like living in a diorama. Back then, I had no idea that one day I'd become a citizen of Numana, and as of today, I've been living here for almost 15 years, and married into a Numana family, so I consider myself an adoptive Numanese.

Why You Should See Numana and Sirolo from the Water

Here's the thing about Numana and Sirolo that most visitors never fully grasp: their relationship to each other only becomes clear when you're out on the water, looking back at the coastline. From dry land, you experience them separately — you drive or walk between them. From the sea, you see how the same mountain shaped both of them, how the same limestone cliffs connect their coastlines, how the beaches tucked underneath them — the Sottosanta beach, the Sassi Neri beneath Sirolo, the Due Sorelle further north — form a single continuous story of geology and human habitation.

That's one of the reasons why I take the DonMar out through these waters every season. A private boat tour of the Riviera del Conero departing from Numana harbour isn't just an excuse to swim at a nice beach — although the beaches are genuinely extraordinary. It's a way of seeing the full picture of a coastline that has been inhabited, traded across, fished, raided, and loved for three thousand years. Numana and Sirolo aren't just pretty towns to visit. They're the reason this stretch of the Adriatic has mattered to people for as long as people have been here.

Come and see them the way they were always meant to be seen — from the sea. Get in touch to book your private tour, and visit these magical places with me.