Overview
The magnificent panorama from Guasco Hill over the sea and the city may be enough to convince you that the climb up to Ancona Cathedral is absolutely worth it. Added to this is the quiet elegance of the cathedral façade, almost a mediation between the Adriatic and the East, between Romanesque style and Byzantine influences, between ancient Greek traces found underground and Gothic elements.
It was built of light-coloured Conero stone around the 11th century on a pre-existing temple of Venus Euplea from the 4th century B.C. and on the site of a later early Christian cult dedicated to St Lawrence. A few decades later, the addition of a new building would give the church its current Greek cross plan, i.e. with the arms of the naves of equal length. In the 13th century, the portal was enriched with a Verona marble prothyrum on stylised lions, as remarkable as the dome and the isolated bell tower, built on a military tower from the late 13th century.
The interior is punctuated by Roman columns with Byzantine capitals. Exploring, one discovers the 16th-century tomb of Blessed Ginelli on the left wall of the presbytery, and in the Chapel of the Madonna an 18th-century altar by Luigi Vanvitelli: the Marian image kept in the Chapel is the object of a devotion that is particularly felt in the city. The crypt houses the 18th-century urns of the patron saints Ciriaco, Liberio and Marcellino. Relics and treasures from the Cathedral, as well as a picture gallery, are in the nearby Diocesan Museum.
