A few steps from Ascoli Piceno is Monteprandone, a very beautiful medieval village, surrounded by nature, art and where it is safe to find excellent Marche food, read the post.
If an alternative setting to the original one could be found for a hypothetical remake of the most famous Shakespearean love novel surely Monteprandone, in the hinterland of the Marche region, would rightly be included among the cities eligible for this purpose, surrounded as it is between greenery and medieval villages.
The municipality of Monteprandone itself has medieval origins as the original village developed in medieval times around Castle in the countryside of Ascoli Piceno. The historic center, among the green of the pines, still preserves the ancient walls and alleys intact.
Regarding the toponymic origins of the city, there is a legend according to which around 800 AD a knight following Charlemagne, on whose name it is uncertain whether it was called Brando or Prando, he stopped on this hill near the valley of the river Tronto and founded the castle there.
The city is renowned, as well as for the production of fine olive oil e wine, also for the cult dedicated to San Giacomo della Marca, whose sanctuary stands in Contrada Santa Maria delle Grazie, in the church of the same name, inside which it is possible to find various traces of artistic history, including the remains of a fresco by an anonymous artist of the 1500s depicting San Sebastiano and San Bernardino da Siena, a wooden altar in Baroque style that contains a valuable panel by Vincenzo Pagani da Monterubbiano - representing the Coronation of the Virgin with Saint Anthony of Padua, John the Baptist, Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Alexandria - the crucifix by Cola d'Amatrice, the inlaid wooden tabernacle of the 1721th century and the wooden choir of XNUMX from the former church of the observants of Fermo, without counting the finds in the museum located in the cloister where various relics of the saint are kept.
In historical and artistic heritage di Monteprandone is also part of the Church of San Nicola di Bari, or San Niccolò, of very ancient origin, the Codex Museum where the manuscripts are kept in cases designed to protect them from the side effects due to changes in temperature and lighting. These are 54 codes exposed to the public and belonging to the surviving codes of the Library of San Giacomo della Marca, built by the saint around the fifteenth century to encourage the education of confreres and scholars. Other codices are found in various Italian and foreign libraries, many of which have been lost. Almost all of them date back to the 400th-XNUMXth century and one to the XNUMXth-XNUMXth century.
Not only art but also good cooking, in fact, a stay or a stop in Monteprandone allows you to savor a country cuisine made of simple but genuine foods consisting mainly of sausages, cheeses, meat (especially white) and homemade pasta (lasagna, pappardelle). Without forgetting the renowned Ascoli olives and the fine DOC wines obtained from the vineyards that enrich the Monteprandonese hills.
