title: Pioraco
text: # Pioraco
  
  Pioraco is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Macerata in the Italian region Marche, located about 60 kilometres (37 mi) southwest of Ancona and about 40 kilometres (25 mi) southwest of Macerata.
  
  ## History
  
  The territory of Pioraco was settled in the Neolithic Age, as shown by the remains of a Bronze Age sanctuary on the top of Monte Primo (late 11th-early 10th centuries BC). In Roman times, Pioraco was a settlement on a branch of the Via Flaminia, with bridges, temples, public edifices and an aqueduct.
  
  In the Middle Ages, it housed a castle which was a residence of the Da Varano family, lords of the nearby Camerino. The presence of paper mills, still active today, is attested from 1346.
  
  ## Main sights
  
  * San Vittorino: Pieve or parish church with baptistry, documented from 1119, built atop the remains of a Roman temple, using spolia. It houses frescoes and baptismal font from 1646.
  * San Francesco: a Romanesque-style church completed in 1327, with a polygonal apse. The interior was remade in Baroque style: it houses an Annunciation attributed to Arcangelo di Cola and a Via Crucis by Francesco Mancini. The annexed convent has a frescoed cloister.
  * Santissimo Crocifisso: a church built in Lombard-Gothic style. It is home to a Crucifix attributed to Girolamo di Giovanni.
  * Madonna della Grotta: small 18th-century chapel/church built in a niche in the rocks, used as hermitage. It has a 15th-century wooden statue of the "Madonna with Child".
  * Roman Bridge.
  