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From Fabriano we drove through the country to the house in Isola di Fano. The landscape was magnificent.

We rented a renovated workers’ cottage. (When I told my dad where we stayed, he laughed. He grew up in one of these workers’ houses. It was home to some 18 family members who worked the padrone’s land. The first floor housed the animals; the sharecroppers all lived on the second floor. The sharecropping system, abandoned after the war, left many workers houses vacant. In modern times, these cottages have been reclaimed and rehabbed.)

The image below is the view from the kitchen window.

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Rose’s comment was, “When you have this outside your window, who needs a painting?”

Large farms cover the northern section of le March. They crown the hills and the tree-lines serve as fences separating one farm from the next.

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