Ancona: a working ferry port with a museum in it

Ancona's port counted 817,627¹ passengers in 2025, 739,399¹ of them on ferries and 78,228¹ off cruise ships, 12% down on the 927,415¹ of 2024, and almost everything worth seeing in the city was built because of that harbor.

The port is the reason the city is here

Passenger traffic fell to 817,627¹ in 2025 from 927,415¹ in 2024, a drop of 12%. In the same year the port handled 9.6 million tonnes of freight and 154,868¹ TEU of containers.

Read those two lines together and you know what kind of place you are arriving in. Ancona is a commercial harbor that also takes passengers, so the walk from the terminal passes cranes and lorry queues.

Where the boats actually go

Scheduled ferries leave Ancona for Greece, Croatia and Albania, with a seasonal summer service added for Montenegro, while the Ancona to Split line was suspended in 2025.

Check the operator's own site for the sailing you want before you build a day around it. Suspensions on this port have lasted whole seasons.

Trajan's arch stands on the quay, not on a wall

The Arch of Trajan dates from 100³ or 116³ AD and was raised on the mole as an honorary arch with a single opening, not as a city gate. It honors Trajan alongside his wife Plotina and his sister Marciana, for enlarging the harbor and making it safe.

It is cut from large blocks of Hymettus marble brought from Greece, set on a podium of Conero stone, with two Corinthian columns carrying the attic. The last restoration was in 2000. Its position matters: you look at it with the working port behind you.

A pentagon built to hold people in quarantine

The first stone of the Mole Vanvitelliana was laid on July 26, 1733⁴ and the building was finished in 1743⁴, to a design by Luigi Vanvitelli. It is a pentagon of close to 20,000⁴ square meters on an artificial island in the port, deliberately outside the old walls, because its job was quarantine.

Today it holds cultural and music programs, and every room has ramps, so it is one of the few historic buildings here you can cross in a wheelchair. Address: Banchina Giovanni da Chio 28. More at the Mole Vanvitelliana.

The museum where the rule is to touch

Entry to the Museo Tattile Statale Omero, inside the Mole, is free in 2026, and only the Design Collection charges, at €5, free on the first Sunday of the month. Prices in euros.

The point of the place is that you handle the work with your hands, which makes it the one museum in this list that a blind traveler and a sighted one use the same way. Plan around the hours, because they are short: Tuesday to Saturday it opens 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm (15:00 to 18:00 on Italian signs), Sundays and holidays 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. See the Omero museum and the museum you touch with your hands, and Marche for the rest of the region.

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