Monteverde

The Da Monteverde were a noble family of Fermo in the Marche, descended from the lords of Brunforte, who held fiefs around the city. Its earliest documented head, Fidesmido da Monteverde, was podesta of Fermo around the middle of the thirteenth century.

The family rose with the Ghibelline leader Mercenario da Monteverde, who took up arms in 1318 and in 1323 defeated the Guelphs at the battle of Osimo. In 1331 he seized Fermo by a coup and ruled it as signore, defying Pope Benedict XII's summons to submit to the Church.

In 1340 conspirators ambushed and killed him while he was riding outside the city, and chroniclers remembered him as a tyrant and enemy of the Church. His kinsmen could not sustain the signoria, and the family died out in 1380, its claims passing through the heiress Vannetta.