Fabriano

Fabriano lies in the Esino valley among the Apennines of the Marche. It became one of Europe's earliest centres of papermaking, with production recorded by 1276. The town's fine watermarked paper won a wide reputation and helped sustain its prosperity in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Fabriano became a free commune in 1234 and developed a local school of painting, later associated with Allegretto Nuzi and Gentile da Fabriano. In 1378 the Chiavelli family established its lordship over the city. After members of the family were massacred in 1435, Francesco Sforza held Fabriano for a short time before it passed to the Papal States in 1444. The city had prospered despite political instability. Its paper also supplied nearby Foligno, an early centre of Italian printing.