For us, this was one of the most important places we visited. Before we went to Italy, we had been told that Paul's grandfather Gino was from in "Sant'Angelo" near Pesaro. However, we hadn't been able to find it on Google Maps. As we were driving one day, we saw a road sign for Sant'Angelo in Lizzola. We immediately started going that way. It turns out that since 2013, Sant'Angelo in Lizzola is no longer a separate village; it incorporated with some other villages to create the larger community of Vallefoglia. Interestingly, if we had used Bing maps instead of Google maps we would have found it more easily. Google chose to show Vallefoglia where Sant'Angelo is, but kept another of the villages Colbordolo. Bing, on the other hand, chose to show Vallefoglia where Colbordolo is and kept the name Sant'Angelo in Lizzola on its map. (Yes, it is confusing!)
You can find Sant'Angelo in Lizzola as site #4 on the map. For brevity's sake, we will usually just write Sant'Angelo instead of the full name.
The historic city center has an attractive gate to go into it.
There are other entrances to the old city center also. One is a large set of stairs, which actually doesn't look very large compared to the tower behind it. The tower and adjacent building are the Town Hall.
And a third entrance is for driving. Here is that entrance; our rental car is in the picture.
This is the road looking from the other way; you can see the mirror in both images.
Only authorized cars are allowed into the small city center area. Here is a picture we took on our 1st visit to Sant'Angelo, in the rain and dark. Paul was hoping to avoid driving in Italy in the rain and dark, but instead he had a number of opportunities to do this.
Here is a link to a video Paul took of the Sant'Angelo City Center, but during the daylight. (56 seconds)
Every city and village in Italy has at least one bar. An Italian bar is barely related to an American bar; a closer relative is an American cafe. They are called bars because there is, indeed, a bar to stand at. But far more coffee is sold than anything else, and all ages are allowed in the bar. Of course, Sant'Angelo has its bar.
This is just outside of the historic city center, although you can see this area is pretty historic itself. Unfortunately, this bar was the only place in our entire trip that we had sub-par wine. Hopefully they will change their selection.
(In case you are curious, the purple strap was to my water bottle holder.)
Side tracking for a moment, we will share a story that Paul's Mom tells of her trip to Italy. When she and Paul's Dad went, at one restaurant Dad got a little confused (not speaking the language) and went into the wrong bathroom. Mom, naturally, went into the other bathroom - which turns out was the men's bathroom. (Luckily, no one else was in there.) She was shocked to find a hole in the ground instead of a seat! The women's room had a regular commode. Anne was delighted when she used the bathroom in Sant'Angelo's bar and discovered ... a hole in the ground! There was only one bathroom in this small bar. Francesco informed us that these are called "Turkish toilets" and are becoming less common in Italy but, obviously, a few are still around.
Sant'Angelo is a hilltop village. This can be glimpsed from one of the roads that lead up to the Sant'Angelo.
Notice the cultivated field just outside of the village ... and the steep slope. We wouldn't want to be driving big farm machinery on those slopes!
This video was taken from the same viewpoint, & might give you a better feel of the terrain. Plus you get to hear Paul say "ciao ciao" at the end. (69 seconds)
Link to video of this scene (69 seconds)
Of course, being on the hilltop means great views looking out. One of the pictures above gave a little glimpse at the view. Of course, we have other photos of the view ... and a video. This first picture is looking East. The tower is in a little town called Ginestreto; hidden by the ridge is Fano.
This next picture is looking Northeast; the city on the right of the picture is Pesaro (#2 on the map). Most of the fields you see are olive tree orchards, including some new plantings.
Here is a video covering these Easterly directions. The start of the video has a great view of the city wall. (2 minutes 48 seconds)
This next picture is looking West from Sant'Angelo, towards the Apennine Mountains (the mountains that run down the center of Italy). The day we took this photo, the low clouds defined the mountains very nicely.
The road that is heading from left to right, along the ridge in the picture, becomes Via Serra right over that hill.
With the help of Francesco and Doni we got a copy of Great-Grandfather Alessandro's birth record. The document included his birth address! And it is on Via Serra. So we went out to find it. Google is mixed up on the actual location, but we persevered and found it anyway. It turns out Doni grew up just down the road from here. She found out that the house was in the Diotalevi name until recently; it now belongs to a step-son of a Diotalevi. See site # 3 on the map.
This next video shows some of our search for the house. The video starts in the incorrect location. If you don't want to watch the entire video, check out the 1st minute or so, then jump to 4 minutes to see the correct location. In the video, we were thinking this house was probably reconstructed and not the original, but we (as indicated above) were corrected on that. It is the exact same house where Paul's great-grandfather Alessandro was born! (6 minutes)
This road, Via Serra, has a sign that we saw many times while driving in Marche: Watch for curves in the road.
2.5 kilometers in over 1.5 miles. Google Maps often underestimated the time to get somewhere, because the curvy roads required slower speeds. The picture below is a link to a video we made driving this road's curves (Anne mistakenly says Sant'Angelo di Lizzola; it is Sant'Angelo in Lizzola). (3 minutes 44 seconds)
This sign was posted along Via Serra; it brings tears to our eyes:
"in memory of all our grandparents, we dedicate this place to Mr. Cermaria Elmo, infantryman of the first world war"
Our last day in Italy, we had lunch in Sant'Angelo in Lizzola, at a little place called 'Ristorante Vecchio Fonte' (Old Spring Restaurant). Francesco and Doni had mentioned that this restaurant had a good reputation.
We walked into the doors you see on the right of the octagonal dining area, and looked around. There were tables with some patrons, and that was pretty much it. No signs, no cash register, not even menus. We stood there looking around, and eventually one of the other diners motioned that we should just grab a seat. So we did. Not much later, a waitress came out. There was no menu; the waitress started telling us the meal options. After we asked her to slow down, she asked if it would be easier if she spoke in English; we enthusiastically replied yes. (This happened a lot, by the way. After a few words in Italian, if the person spoke English they generally offered to speak it instead. They didn't want to suffer through our broken Italian.) First course was the choice of a number of pasta-based dishes. This was lunch in Italy, so of course pasta is a requirement. Paul selected linguine with a 'mushroom sauce' and Anne selected linguine with a 'green sauce'. Sauce is a bit of a misnomer. In Italy the pasta is often served in a way that features the pasta and vegetables, without drowning it in a rich sauce.
Paul's dish the one closer to the camera. You can also see the half liter of wine we ordered, and the bread that came with the meal.
A close-up of Anne's meal, which had peas and artichoke in it (and the sparking water we ordered):
The second course was a choice of vegetables. We selected roasted potatoes and spinach. In case you were wondering, garlic and onion were NOT a problem in Marche; they just don't feature those ingredients much in that area of Italy.
At the end of dinner, Paul ordered an espresso, and Anne had a chamomile tea. With those, they brought out a few dolce, or small desserts. This is fairly common, having a little dolce with your espresso, tea, or cioccolata calda.
This was a typical espresso cup; Paul's fingers are provided for size reference. Of course, the cup isn't actually full when you get it; that would be far too much water in an espresso. (Anne thinks everyone in Italy must be constantly dehydrated.)
We will leave you with 2 additional videos.
This link is to a video that shows that adorable gate to the city, in addition to a view out plus a walk to the city center. (2 minutes 41 seconds)
This link is to the video made the afternoon before we left, after we had the lunch shown above. (2 minutes 8 seconds)
(You might need to let these videos buffer to get a good viewing of them.)
Updated July 2020