Ancona sits on Italy’s central Adriatic, a working port built on cliffs that form a natural amphitheatre above the sea. It is the regional capital of the Marche, and a city where everyday life, Roman remains, and sea views meet within a compact radius.
If you are asking Is Ancona worth visiting?, the answer is yes, especially if you like places that reveal themselves in layers.
The Cathedral of San Ciriaco crowns Guasco Hill, the height directly above Ancona’s historic harbour and old town.
The site has been sacred since antiquity, when a Greek sanctuary stood on this headland; the present church blends Romanesque lines with Byzantine echoes and a distinctive domed crossing.
Outside, a pine-lined terrace opens the view from the breakwaters across the bay towards Monte Conero, the limestone promontory that rises just south of the city. From here the cathedral reads as a natural lookout linking town and sea.
Ancona’s historic core centres on Piazza del Plebiscito, the main civic square, then climbs towards San Francesco alle Scale through a grid of 19th-century shopfronts.
Meanwhile, down at the water’s edge stands the Arch of Trajan, erected in 115 CE to mark the emperor’s link to this Adriatic port.
On the slopes beneath Guasco Hill, the remains of the Roman amphitheatre surface among later houses, a reminder that the ancient city filled the same hillside now topped by the cathedral.
Taken together, the square, port, and amphitheatre sit within a short walk of one another and sketch a clear map of Ancona’s continuity from antiquity to today.
North-east of the historic centre, Parco del Cardeto stretches across the clifftops between the old lighthouse and the newer beacon.
Footpaths thread through Mediterranean scrub and open lawns to lookouts over the Adriatic, the working harbour, and the Conero headland.
Remains of coastal defences and the lighthouse keep the maritime story in view, and the height makes clear how the city sits on its natural amphitheatre of cliffs.
A short walk from the old harbour, Santa Maria della Piazza is an 11th–12th-century Romanesque church with a plain brick façade.
Beneath the floor are the remains of earlier Early Christian basilicas; through viewing panels you can see sections of mosaics and foundations.
The compact scale and the setting, just steps from the port, bring late-antique layers and the medieval city into the same space.
East of the centre, the Passetto promenade follows the clifftop to the Monumento ai Caduti, a white travertine memorial from the early 20th century honouring Ancona’s World War I fallen, set on a high terrace.
From the terrace, a long stairway cut into the rock drops to flat bathing ledges and a line of fishermen’s caves (grotte in Italian): hand-dug shelters in the cliff once used to store boats and gear, today recognisable by their brightly painted doors.
If you find yourself asking, is Ancona worth visiting? the view from these ledges, cliffs at your back and the open Adriatic ahead, makes a quiet case.
Set just below the cathedral in Palazzo Ferretti on the slope of Guasco Hill, the National Archaeological Museum follows the region from prehistory through the Roman age.
A core thread is the Piceni, an Italic people who lived in the Marche before Rome: gold jewellery, weapons, and finely painted ceramics show their craft and customs.
Later galleries add Greek and Roman finds from the Adriatic coast, placing Ancona within an older sea network of trade and ideas.
At sea level on the inner edge of the port, a five-sided artificial island hosts the Mole Vanvitelliana, linked to the docks by small bridges.
Designed in the 18th century by Luigi Vanvitelli as a quarantine station, its thick walls and orderly corridors once kept ships, goods, and people in isolation before entering the city.
Today the same measured spaces host exhibitions, concerts, and design events, and the complex also houses the Museo Tattile Omero, a tactile museum where art is explored by touch.
Ancona’s shoreline stretches from the city’s bathing ledges to the Monte Conero coast, part of the Conero Regional Park just south of town.
Together, Mezzavalle and Portonovo form a continuous stretch of protected coast, each cove with its own mood: one wild and intimate, the other tranquil but framed by historical landmarks.
Facing Piazza della Repubblica, the 19th-century Teatro delle Muse is Ancona’s main opera house.
Designed by architect Pietro Ghinelli and inaugurated in 1827, it suffered heavy damage during World War II and remained closed for decades. A major restoration eventually brought it back to life, reopening its doors in 2002.
Today, the theatre features a classic horseshoe auditorium with stacked tiers behind a restrained neoclassical façade. And its programme ranges from opera and symphonic concerts to theatre, dance, and jazz across the season, offering a concise snapshot of how Ancona rebuilt and revitalized its cultural life in the modern era.
For travellers who like sea light, open-air history, and a city that works as well as it welcomes, the answer is yes.
Within a compact centre, what to do in Ancona ranges from climbing the cathedral on Guasco Hill and walking past the Arch of Trajan on the waterfront, to exploring the Passetto stairway to the sea and the Mole Vanvitelliana across the docks. Quiet Romanesque corners such as Santa Maria della Piazza, beaches at Portonovo and Mezzavalle, and the National Archaeological Museum offer further layers to discover.
