The inexhaustible beauty of what is known and familiar

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For many years, I've spent much of my holidays at the seaside in Ponte Sasso di Fano. A sea that may be lesser, peripheral, sandy, lacking depth and rocks against which to measure the power of the waves, but no less beautiful and evocative for that. A sea whose pale hues quickly blend with the sky, making the horizon less distant, and which evokes not the unknown, or perhaps the desire to escape, but rather the inexhaustible richness of the known and familiar—in short, a sea that's "ours," like the hills that frame it. Much has changed over the years, obviously: the lifeguards, the umbrellas, the heat, the children have grown up, and their grandchildren have taken their place. But I defend myself by clinging to persistence. More than a vacationer, I now feel like a sort of lookout in a microcosm that I insist on always seeing as the same. The power of suggestion, one might say, perhaps of old age, but so it is .

I believe this air of familiarity, simultaneously calm and restless, pervades the entire Marche region. We find it in the "blue mountains," in the woods, in the villages nestled on the hills that gently slope toward the sea, and even in the waves. A persistence that doesn't let itself be overwhelmed by change, but rather embraces it, continually renewing itself without too much of a show ; a unique and largely unknown beauty, which makes many Marche residents feel privileged by nature and history.

On the stretch of coast where I live, the internet works terribly, and there are days when you can't even watch the RAI channels, but gazing at the sea and the hills from the terrace at home is truly captivating. You can't just stay there and do something else; even reading becomes difficult; at most you can play with your grandchildren, often trying to hold off their desire to go to the beach for as long as possible, not to watch it . But this, too, is healthy. It keeps our decrepitude at bay, and that of a society where there are no children left, though many of them still play on the beach and in the shallow waters of Ponte Sasso, where the sand, today as always, represents the ideal fuel for their imagination: let's do this, let's do that; it doesn't even matter if in the end we do nothing; children know full well that these are constructions on sand; their greatest satisfaction comes from simply being able to imagine them together with someone else. As for the rest, I assume that anyone who comes to spend their holidays in these parts is well acquainted with the beauty of the Ancona and Pesaro hinterland, the villages and castles of the Arcevia area and the Cesano Valley, set like pearls in an already beautiful natural setting, made even more beautiful by the work of generations of farmers. Not to mention the food and wines of the Marche . In these parts, you're spoiled for choice between the hinterland and the sea. My favorite restaurant, for example, is in Fano and is called "Cile's." The atmosphere is welcoming, the prices are fair, and the quality of the cuisine is excellent.

I'd go there every day just to enjoy the unmissable lemon and licorice sorbet; I still go when I can because I love the atmosphere. The owner takes the orders, and the servers, all women, do so with kindness and affability, as if they've always known even the diners who are there for the first time, but above all, with discretion. Unlike what usually happens in holiday resorts, by some miracle, here the people seated at the tables speak in hushed tones, so you can converse freely without hearing the conversations at neighboring tables or quickly retreating, as happens to me, into a sort of stupefied silence. I especially enjoy going there for dinner, anticipating the subsequent nighttime stroll along the seafront. Except when there's a full moon, you can't see the sea at night, but you can hear its sound . It tells a story of millions of years, incomparably longer than our own, yet familiar. Persistence again.

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