From more than thousand years the Rancia Castle,  massive and daring, dominates the plain of  Tolentino, which becomes  very sweet on may.

The meadows smell of hay,  the ears wave in the  wind forming a green carpet; feelings of peace and of  happy thoughts seem to bloosom between  the cornflowers and  the  tulips.

It seems really impossible to believe that in this place there was  a bloody battle  the 2nd e il 3rd may of 1815. In this  battle met the army  of  Gioacchino Murat, king of Naple, against the austrian imperial army leaded by the baron Federico Bianchi.

Infact  some months before than that may of 1815, Murat pubblished the Proclamation of Rimini,which  is  considered the first  manifesto of indipendence of Italy.

He took possetion of  Tuscany, the Marche and the Romagna, but  the superiority in numbers of austrian army  obbliged him, afer  the first victoriouses battlles, to  retire slowly to south. The  choice of Tolentino as field of battle  was consequent  to the that it reppresented the natural point to   divide with major distace possibille the two  austrian armies.

The Rancia Castle  was theatre of the battle. The austrian  troops commanded from the  general Bianchi defeated Gioacchino Murat, who was searching for unifying  Italy in that  which  was called the first battle of italian Risorgimento .

The battle was evocked, in its different  stages, in the first days of  may  with hundred of  figures  to care of the  "Tolentino '815" Association.

The Castle takes the name form a preexistent deposite of  grain (called "grancia" from the latin "granica"and  french grange) used from the  Cirstercian moncs of the Abbey of Chiaravalle of Fiastra at the end of  the  XII century.

The works of renouvation and transformation in fortress were made between the 1353 and the 1357 from the architect Andrea Beltrami from Como for order of Rodolfo II da Varano of Camerino, who had intuited the high potential of the grancia from the military strategic point of view. The Castle of quadrilateral shape, presentes the entry  controlled by  a "portaia" tower. All is dominated from the donjon, high 25 meters.

When the Gesuites took possesion of the 'Abbey of Fiastra in the 1581, the Castle left its militar  connotations and was  reorganized as  a big farmhouse used for the ospitality and the refreshement  of  pillgrims. In the 1782 the Pope Pio VI stayed near to Rancia and  in this occasion gave all the goods of the Abbey of Fiastra, included also the castle, to the noble family Bandini whose last discendant ,Maria Sofia Gravina di Ramacca,in the 1974, gave it to the muncipal district of Tolentino, the actual proprietary. It finds to 5 Km from the center of Tolentino.

For visits and times to call the 0733/973349 or to the pro-loco  0733.972937