Marche Breaks

This beguiling hill town is one of the southern Marche's smaller gems. The old centre stands nobly on its own plug of rock neatly separated from the modern part of town. The place still has an old-fashioned air about it and little has yet been over-restored.

Although it is fun to visit when the busy Thursday market is in full swing, you'll have to park some distance from the centre.

Offida has pre-historic origins, and it was also dominated by Romans (the name seemingly stems from the Etruscan word Ophyte). Offida was a feud in the 11th century. It became a free municipality in the 13th and 14th centuries and often allied with Fermo during diplomatic disputes and the war against Ascoli. The interior wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines stopped when the Municipality passed under the Church’s domain.

Offida is rich in monuments bearing witness to its ancient past, starting from the castle’s walls and the stronghold, built according to a design by architect Baccio Pontelli. Remains may still be admired upon entering the town, near the hospital.

Santa Maria della Rocca is today one of the most precious testimonies of the Romanesque architecture in the whole region and is one of the area's most important examples of Piceno monastic art. It is striking, above all, for its imposing austerity, made all the more powerful by its position overlooking the city and the surrounding hills. The building began as a Longobard castle before being passed to the Abbey of Farfa around 1000. The present building dates back to 1330 and provides clear evidence of the peculiarity of Piceno monastic style, which is marked by simplicity and an almost total absence of decoration.It has three high, slender polygonal apses, with a Gothic portal at the foot of the central apse. Inside, visitors may admire interesting frescoes dating back to the 14th century and belonging to the Bologna school. The frescoes around the apse were attributed to the monk Fra Marino Angeli of Montalto Marche, who worked in Offida in 1423. The upside-down sarcophagus used as altar dates back to the Roman age and represents the God Silvano. In the surrounding area is the beautiful crypt, composed of three naves, which become five in the transept. The upper church, with its single, notably high nave and truss beam ceiling, is reached by a spiral staircase. The altar is also interesting - it is made from a stone sarcophagus from the Roman period and carved with dancers and bunches of grapes. The crypt is also enriched by frescoes dating back to the second half of the 14th century, and it hosts art exhibitions.

The unusual triangular main piazza dominated by the beautiful town hall - one of the finest examples of 15th century civic architecture in the Marche. The building's lovely upper loggia and swallowtail battlements give the square true class. The Municipal Palace (13th-14th centuries) has on its main front a porch with cylindrical columns and round arches made of brickwork. The arches hold a slender loggia. Inside, visitors may admire works by Pietro Alemanno amd Simone De Magistris, as well as the Archaeological Museum “G. Allevi”, containing finds and furnishings from a necropolis of the 7th-5th century B.C. The Sant’Agostino Sanctuary dates back to the 14th century and was re-built in the 18th century, it shows on its left side Romanesque-Gothic characters. Inside are paintings by local artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as a precious reliquary of the Eucharistic Miracle occurred to Luciano in 1273. It is a 14th-century work of goldsmithry from the Veneto region, with Byzantine influences.

The Church of Addolorata has a Renaissance porch and an earthenware cornice with a 16th-century fascia, adorned by 15th-century friezes. On the right side of the façade, the church del Suffragio has the most ancient walls in Offida, in which 14th century small doors made of travertine may be seen.

Back in the town centre, a web of narrow alleyways beckon you to explore - look out for the numerous Renaissance details while you wander about. Then to round off a visit you could always buy some of the hand-made lace - pizzo a mano.

Lace making is one of Offida's most common crafts. Women can still be seen, seated at their doorways in old town passageways, working intently, often with great rapidity, with bobbins, threads of white or grey yarn and pins on designs of flowers and animals.

The remotest written information on lace dates back to 1476 in Ferrara and to 1511 in Offida. Originally begun among working families, the art of lace making was later cultivated by religious orders and aristocratic families. It was the Benedictine nuns who encouraged the spread of this art, which led to an increase in production during the second half of the 1600's.

These fabrics, finely embroidered, were exported in early 17th century outside the Marca by Jewish merchants. Those keen on admiring the manufacturing of pillow laces have the chance to observe the whole process, penetrating into the typical small streets of the historic centre, where pillow lace makers use to work in summer.

In 1979, the Offida Craft Lace Co-operative was set up to encourage the production of Offida lace and to sell it directly to the customer.

Another ancient tradition of Offida is that of Carnival, during Carnival Friday visitors may take part in the “Bove Finto”, a peculiar festival in which the key player is a papier-maché bull led by two people.

Participants wear their typical Carnival costumes, called lu guazzarò, and run after the bull. The bull is then symbolically “killed” at dusk, in the centre of the square.