Ancona Open Air: a city-wide museum across streets, squares and neighbourhoods

This itinerary takes you through the works mapped in the “Ancona Open Air” Art Guide, produced by the Culture and Tourism Department of the Comune di Ancona as part of the city’s bid for the title of Italian Capital of Culture 2028.

The natural starting point is the Mole Vanvitelliana, home to some of the most striking installations on the route. In the outer courtyard, Sbarco by Velasco Vitali – a silver-coloured hull roughly fourteen metres long – evokes the themes of migration and freedom.

On the outer walkway, Mimmo Paladino’s great red Cavallo gazes out to sea with its hollow eye, at once archaic in form and entirely contemporary in spirit.

Walking along Lungomare Vanvitelli, you reach Molo Clementino and Enzo Cucchi’s Fontana dei due soli: a long stone bench in Istrian limestone facing the sea, celebrating Ancona’s unique geography as the only Italian city from which both sunrise and sunset can be seen over the Adriatic.

Heading up into the city centre, Piazza Stamira is home to Guido Armeni’s Monument to Stamira: the figure of Ancona’s heroine launches skyward with deliberately elongated proportions, a sculptural gesture that crystallises courage and civic spirit.

A short walk away on Corso Stamira, the facade of the former Casa del Mutilato preserves Mentore Maltoni’s large Arengario bas-relief, a refined example of 1930s realist sculpture.

On Corso Carlo Alberto, Giorgio Bompadre’s Due Arcobaleni – two enamelled metal arches – enter into a poetic conversation with light and sky, part of a triptych connecting Ancona with Fermignano and Pesaro.

In Piazza Pertini, pause in front of Valeriano Trubbiani’s Mater Amabilis: an unstable, visionary metal structure evoking Fellini’s set designs, inviting reflection on the bond between humanity and nature.

More works by this towering figure of twentieth-century Marche art can be found inside the Pinacoteca Civica “Francesco Podesti”.

Climb to the Parco del Pincio to find Pericle Fazzini’s Monument to the Resistance, reached via a steep staircase lined with concrete monoliths and sixteen iron plaques narrating the story of Ancona’s partisan movement.

The entrance gate itself – Vele al vento by Giovanna Fiorenzi – is a work of art: a wrought-iron composition evoking the wreckage of war carried by a wind that symbolically drives it towards liberation and renewal.

Continue on to the Parco del Cardeto, the city’s green lung overlooking the sea. Along the panoramic footpath you’ll encounter Floriano Ippoliti’s La Porta dei Mu, a circular bronze sculpture engraved with cosmic symbols that quietly frames the landscape beyond.

Further along, Eugenio Tibaldi’s site-specific installation Tensione Superficiale – created in 2025 from a disused sailing boat and a canoe – reframes discarded materials as the stuff of renewal, opening a living dialogue between urban space and nature.

The itinerary extends beyond traditional sculpture. At the Galleria del Risorgimento, artist RUN transformed the underpass in 2024 into a large painted library incorporating the city’s historical and architectural landmarks.

In the Capodimonte neighbourhood, a series of murals created for Anconacrea2020FF covers facades and stairways, turning the entire quarter into an open-air gallery.

If you’d like to extend your exploration, head to the campuses of the Università Politecnica delle Marche: at the former Caserma Villarey you’ll find Aligi Sassu’s Grande Cavallo Reale, while the Faculty of Engineering on Via Brecce Bianche is home to Trubbiani’s Tarpare le ali, a flock of skylarks with broken wings that ranks among the artist’s most powerful works.

On the city’s eastern headland at Via Posatora, Eliseo Mattiacci’s Inclinata al Sol Levante tilts its steel axis towards the rising sun, drawing the horizon into the sculpture itself.

All works are georeferenced in the official bilingual art guide, available free of charge in Italian and English.