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						 Grottammare is named after the toponym “Grotte a mare” 
						 (“Caves 
						to the sea”) that refers to the natural caves opening 
						from the east side of the ancient town’s hill, once 
						lapped by sea waves. 
						On the other side the tourist history of Grottammare as 
						a famous health and seaside resort, starts in the 
						seventeenth-century, when noble families of the period 
						used to spend here their holiday-time. 
						 
						The development of the urban centre along the seaside 
						starts in the eighteenth-century, and it has been 
						possible for more favourable social and economic 
						conditions on one side and because of the continuous 
						sea-withdrawal on the other one.  
						 
						In the nineteenth-century Grottammare was a recommended 
						place by many of the main doctors of the period; it was 
						an ideal town for having convalescence and treatments 
						for respiratory and dermatological diseases. 
						Some of the most famous personalities that chose 
						Grottammare for a stay have been Girolamo Bonaparte, the 
						younger brother of Napoleon, and the famous musician
						Franz Liszt who declared in the summer of 1868: 
						“I will always keep in my mind the weeks spent in 
						Grottammare as the best and sweetest of my life”.
 
						 
						 LThe 
						charming  
						villini Liberty, 
						small villas in Art Noveau style close to the seaside, 
						marked out the beginning of the twentieth-century, and 
						still today are one of the artistic greatness achieved 
						by Grottammare.
 
						In the following years Grottammare has been further 
						adorned with a lot of palms and oleanders along the 
						promenade, wide pineta near the beach and, starting from 
						thirties, the first facilities for entertainment and 
						spare time like the Kursaal, a famous nightclub that 
						livened up sixties nights of the whole Riviera 
						Adriatica: today it’s a museum.  |