recanati
 
On the central Piazza Leopardi, the town's Pinacoteca Civica (Tues-Sun 10am-1pm & 4-7pm; L6000/¬3,09) is housed in the nineteenth-century Palazzo Comunale , a fussy mock-Renaissance symbol of Recanatese obtuseness - in order to build it they ripped down a fine medieval palace. All that remains of the original palace is the vast Torre del Borgo , glowering down on the municipal architecture that surrounds it. Once inside the gallery you can forget all this and lose yourself in Gigli's world, evoked by costumes worn by the great tenor, presents received by him (including a dagger from D'Annunzio), and, best of all, a replica of his dressing room. A crackly recording of his voice is often playing on a wind-up gramophone as a fitting accompaniment to the exhibits. The gallery itself has only two paintings worth spending time on, both by Lotto . There's a polyptych, complete save for its predella (which somehow ended up in Russia), and an Annunciation , better known as The Madonna of the Cat for the cat scuttling between the Madonna and angel - thought by some critics to represent the devil.

Turning left out of the piazza, the main street leads down to the Palazzo Leopardi (mid-June to mid-Sept daily 9am-8pm; mid-Sept to mid-June Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-7pm; L7000/¬3.61), where the poet was born in 1798 and which still contains his vast library of over 25,000 volumes. The odd name of the square in front of it, Piazzuola Sabato del Villagio , comes from one of Leopardi's poems, in which he observes a typical Recanati Saturday, with "a swarm of children shouting on the piazzuola". You're almost bound to meet crowds of schoolkids here, but their elation tends to come from relief at finishing the tedious tour of Leopardi's gloomy house. The best-known thing about the poet is his lack of success in love, which is typically blamed on his smothering mother, who still cut up his meat for him when he was 25. Leopardi sought solace in the view from the edge of town - on a good day it extends as far as the Apennines. The lower hills, which seem to roll endlessly towards the mountains, inspired his most famous poem, Colle Infinito ("Infinite Hills"), and a plaque with a line from it has been stuck on a wall, above a heap of rocks from Naples, where he died and is buried. Adding insult to injury, the place where he came to forget his failures with women has become a lovers' lane.