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The Marches is a region of Central Italy on the Adriatic side of the Umbria-Marches Apennines. Square in shape, its longer sides curve slightly north-east with the huge projection of the peninsula of Mount Conero.
 
The Marches is the sixth smallest region in Italy and borders with Emilia-Romagna and the San Marino Republic to the north, Tuscany, Umbria and Latium to the west, Abruzzo to the south and lies on the Adriatic Sea to the east.

 
History. The region is mainly mountainous, although the groups are not particularly high: the highest mountain is Mount Vettore (2,476 m.) part of the Sibillini Mountains on the Umbrian border. From the ridge of the Apennines it slopes gradually towards the Adriatic coast, which for long stretches is flat and straight, a narrow ribbon of sand lying against the fringes of the hills beyond.

Elsewhere it is steep, rocky and majestic. The mountainous interior was subjected to complex orogenic phenomena of subsidence and settling which over the centuries led to the formation of clefts and faults, and the landscape now has a great variety of forms with longitudinal and transverse valleys of alluvial origin in the Apennine range.

Apart from Nera, which flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea, the main rivers feed into the Adriatic. However, due to the proximity of the Apennines to the sea, the conformation of the river valleys and the irregular rainfall, their flow is rather short and of a torrential nature, catchment basins are underdeveloped and the rivers are not navigable. The most important rivers are the Marecchia, Conca, Foglia, Metauro, Cesano, Esino, Musone, Potenza, Chienti, Tenna, Aso and Tronto. The Marecchia and Conca debouch in Romagna; the high valley of the Tronto lies in Latium while its lower course forms the Abruzzo administrative boundary.

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