the rich get richer17th entry – le marche 2013

Today we traveled to Sassocorvaro in the Urbino province. To get there, you take the road to Urbino and keep following it west into the mountains. The drive along the provincial roads was amazing, everything from Fossombrone to Urbino is new and wonderfully paved and designed. The road down to Ascoli was equally well maintained.

I began to think about legacies. Urbino was a Renaissance center and here we are all these years later and it still is a jewel. Pittsburgh is no longer one of the three corporate centers in America, but we benefit from the legacy of the time it was. The road to Urbino is new, modern and well maintained. (It’s too bad that the roads down south where there in no Renaissance legacy are still narrow, not well marked and full of 90 degree turns.)

Sassocorvaro is a hilltop town above the reservoir in the above pic. It’s a busy place; they were setting up for some kind of festival tonight and the town is full of small restaurants and tourist favoring shops. We seem to be following a couple from Milan the whole time we were in the hill-town. At one point they were talking to an old resident who was explaining where he lived as a young boy. He lived two streets down the mountain-side. (The above pic is of Mercatale, the town at the bottom of the mountain and next to the reservoir created on the Foglia River.)

We had a picnic lunch at a park beside the reservoir and then had a cold coffee at the park restaurant. Nine pine trees were integrated into the restaurant’s interior. The tree trunks were part of the restaurant decor.