Costarella

Costarella is entirely made up of stairs and represents one of the most typical streets of Numana. In the past this was the quarter where fishermen lived, so they walked along these stairs every day to go to the port.

The writer Cesare Romiti in its book “Guida Ricordo di Numana (1927) wrote as follows about La Costarella:

“…at a certain point along Umberto street (today Roma street) you have an offshoot: the way on the left arrives at the beach where the visitors of Numana centre usually go. The beach is known as S.Lazzaro beach or more commonly as Spiaggiuola. The way on the right, instead, goes down between two rows of small houses. It is officially named “via della Marina”, but no one uses this name, because this so steep, “improbable” (as Vico d’Arisbo called it) path, that in certain points reaches a gradient of 24-25% is commonly known with the euphemistic word “Costarella””.

Texts collected by Dott. Davide Drenaggi

Walking along the Costarella means entering into contact with an ancient past. Houses made up of typical stones of the Conero remind us an age when quarrying was one of the most important activities in the Conero area.
Nowadays you can admire beautiful buildings in Numana and in the surroundings. As the archaeologist Simone Sasso writes, they are “villas, but also rural houses, today restored for the most part, that stud the green sides of the mount (both towards Ancona and towards Sirolo and Numana) with white limestone.
Stones of the Conero have been used until not long ago (last quarries were closed in the late 60s) as finish components for buildings, as well as for fences or supporting walls. As a result they become a peculiarity of some quarters of Ancona, in the Passetto area, in the 50s”.
(from the text of Simone Sasso: “La cava romana del Conero: una testimonianza dell’attività estrattiva”.)