Camerino
At the center of the mountainous area in the south-west of the province of Macerata, the city of Camerino dominates and extends over the great basin flanked by two mountain ranges, closed S by the Sibillini massif and N by the Apennine foothills culminating in Monte Catria. The tourist is struck by the typical form urbis: long, narrow and winding streets, wide squares, splits open as balconies towards infinity attest to a history three times thousand years. The outer walls and facades of bare stone houses bear traces of destruction and fires; the ruins of medieval fortresses and castles in the surrounding countryside, palaces and churches, despite the disastrous earthquakes of 1279, 1749 and 1799, make Camerino one of the most characteristic and interesting cities of the Marche.
Ancient Umbrian city, its history has roots beyond the Neolithic as attested by the frequent traces that meet in the territory. Allied with Rome in the second Sannitic war, Camerino concluded an “aequum foedus” with the eternal city (309 BC). In the Second Punic War he provided Rome with 600 fighters. Consul C. Mario, in the battle of the Raudii Fields (near Vercelli) against the Cimbri (101 BC), exalted the heroism of the two cohorts of Camerti honoring them on the field of Roman citizenship. After the social war, it was a flourishing town hall and sided with Pompey in the civil war against Caesar. Passed to the rank of Cologne during the empire, the tradition has preserved memory of the siege that Alaric would have unnecessarily placed on the city. The bishopric already in 465 had a vast ecclesiastical jurisdiction for over a millennium. Defeated the Goths in 553 was part of the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna and in 592, following the Lombard conquest, gave its name to a duchy incorporated into that of Spoleto. By Carlo Magno Camerino was made the capital of the homonymous brand extending from the Apennines to the sea. From the marquis Guarnieri was incorporated to what was then called Mark of Ancona. Ghibelline town before, became a strong Guelph fortress and seat of the Papal Legation of the Mark (1240) for which suffered the siege and destruction of the troops of Manfred led by Percivalle Doria (1259). Resources especially at the initiative of Gentile da Varano who since the second half of the thirteenth century laid the foundations for the lordship of his family which, with brief parentheses – the people’s republic (1434-1443), the siege and the conquest of Cesare Borgia, the infamous Duke Valentino (1502), concluded with the massacre of Giulio Cesare da Varano and three sons strangled by Micheletto da Valenza -, lasted until 1539, continued for a few years (until 1545) by Duke Ottavio Famese. Camerino had its splendor of renaissance city rich in arts and commerce in the second half of the ‘400, when by now the family from Varano had close relationship with almost all the Italian signorie, from the Medici to the Visconti and the Sforza, the Montefeltro, the Malatesta and the Della Rovere, from the Manfredi of Faenza to the Guinisi of Lucca. The son of Julius Caesar, Giovanni Maria, escaped the bloody ferocity of the Borgia, was returned by the pontiff Giulio II to the lordship and by Leone X insignia of the ducal title (1515) with jurisdiction from the Valle del Nera to the sea with Senigallia and Civitanova. In 1545 the city returns under the direct rule of the S. See with the function of head office of Apostolic Delegation. Begins thus the decadence of the city aggravated by the increase of small towns already close to her subjects, but now favored by particular situations of activities and life as well as the connection of important roads. Camerino has given its name to the most prestigious pictorial school in the Marche (sec. XIV-XV) with the major exponents who have disseminated their works in every part of the world: Archangel of Cola, Giovanni Boccati, Girolamo di Giovanni.
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