With the expulsion in 509 BC of the last of the Etruscan Roman monarchs, the new Republic of Rome gradually began to make its presence felt in other parts of Italy. The Piceni and Umbri tribes in the modern day Marche region had already been weakened by attacks from Greek colonists from southern Italy and by Celtic inroads from the north and easily came under the sway of Rome.
The Romans began to exert power over the Marche region around the 3rd Century BC in order to establish an Adriatic coastal link with the eastern Mediterranean. By 298 BC they had established a Roman mint in Ancona and by the beginning of the 2nd Century BC a Roman temple had been built on the hill overlooking the port. Elsewhere in the region Roman settlements were being established.
Among the earliest Roman engineering feats were the construction of two major roads linking Rome and the Adriatic coast. The via Flaminia was completed in 220 BC and followed the TiberValley, crossing the Apennine mountains to reach the Adriatic coast at Fanum Fortunae (Fano). For the first time it gave Roman armies easy access to the Po valley and north Italy. Another great Roman road, the via Salaria, headed east from Rome to Ascolum (Ascoli Piceno) in the south of the region.
By the 1st Century BC the Marche region had become consolidated within the Roman territory and divided into two provinces - the northern stretches formed part of Roman Umbria, while the south was known as Picenum. Colonies had been established throughout both provinces, each surrounded with walls and city gates, each laid out with a grid-like Roman street plan and complete with theatres, amphitheatres and civic buildings.
Ambitious building projects continued during the reigns of the first Roman Emperors so that by the end of the 2nd Century AD a score of modern Roman cities, decorated with fine monuments, had transformed the Marche into a thriving civilisation.
But it was not to last. In AD 476, Rome, already weakened by the split between the Western and Eastern Empires and the first forays by Goths and Vandals from the north, finally fell to the barbarian warrior Odoacer. His trail of destruction left the Marche region in ruins.
There are a considerable number of Roman monuments and ruins throughout the Marche. The remains of the region's largest Roman Amphitheatre can be seen in Ancona while nearby, at the port, stands Trajan's Arch. The ruins of other Roman towns can be seen at Urbisaglia, Helvia Ricina and Falerone.
Several remarkable feats of Roman engineering along the via Flaminia include Ponte Mallio at Cagli, the Furlo Tunnel and the Arch of Augustus at Fano.
Among the finest sculptural finds of the period are the magnificent Gilded Bronzes of Pergola.
