Ancona Ferry Terminal Walk in Italy

Ancona sits on a bend in the Adriatic coast where the shoreline curves sharply into an elbow — which is exactly what its name means. Greek colonists from Syracuse founded the city around the 4th century BC and called it Ankon, "elbow," after the shape of the promontory the old town still occupies.

The harbor has defined Ancona for its entire history, and it still does. This is one of the busiest ferry ports on the Adriatic, with regular crossings to Patras and Igoumenitsa in Greece, to Split in Croatia, and to Albania. Travelers heading to Greece by sea rather than by air pass through this terminal, often without spending more than an hour in the city itself.

Above the port, the old town climbs the hill known as Monte Guasco. At the summit stands the Cathedral of San Ciriaco, a Romanesque-Byzantine church built over what was once a temple to Venus, with views out over the harbor and the Adriatic beyond. Closer to the water, the Arch of Trajan marks the entrance to the port — a white marble triumphal arch raised in the second century AD to honor the emperor for expanding the harbor, and still standing at the edge of the working docks nearly two thousand years later.

Much of Ancona was rebuilt after heavy bombing in the Second World War, so the city today is a mix of the ancient and the postwar practical — a real working port city more than a postcard one. For most visitors, it is a place passed through on the way to a ferry, glimpsed from the terminal or the old streets above it before boarding.