Corinaldo

Corinaldo sits on a hill above the Cesano valley, forty kilometers from Ancona and thirteen from Senigallia on the Adriatic coast. The town is built as a single fortified block on the hillside, walls following the contour of the slope so that the historic center reads from below as one continuous ring of stone rather than a cluster of separate buildings. Inside, the Piaggia climbs from the lower gates toward the top of the hill, and the Pozzo della Polenta sits partway up that stair, the point where the street's steepness is sharpest and where the town's best-known legend is anchored: a peasant carrying a sack of cornmeal stopped to rest against the well, dropped the sack in, climbed down after it, and was laughed at by the whole town.

That story is walked back through every July. Maria Goretti was born in the town in 1890 and lived in the commune until she was nine, a separate strand of the town's history, tied to the sanctuary and family home rather than to the walls or the well. The three things sit close together on the same small hill: fortification, stair-well legend, and saint's birthplace, each occupying its own corner of a town small enough to hold all three within sight of each other.