La Costarella

La Costarella is the most characteristic and evocative street in the old town centre, a long flight of steps decorated by flowers that connects the upper part of the town to the marina and the seafront in Numana bassa. The typical houses in Conero limestone that line it were once inhabited by fishermen who walked along it every day to reach the port.

Walking along the Costarella means plunging into a distant past when rock quarrying was one of the main activities of the area (the last quarries were closed in the mid-1960s), and Conero stone became the distinguishing feature of the marvellous buildings which, as the archaeologist Simone Sasso writes, "punctuate the green slopes of the mountain with white limestone, both towards Ancona and on the side that descends from Sirolo to the coast of Numana".

The writer Cesare Romiti, in his book "Guida ricordo di Numana" (1927), spoke of the "Costarella" as follows: "....at a certain point on Via Umberto (now Via Roma) two roads branch off, one to the left leading to the beach, where the people of Numana Alta go to swim, known as the Spiaggia di S. Lazzaro, or, more commonly, the "Spiaggiola"; the other on the right, between a double row of small houses, is officially called Via della Marina, it is a very steep road, an "improbable path" as Vico d'Arisbo called it, which in some points reaches a 24 or 25% slope, is called and known by everybody with the euphemistic name of Costarella".