FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK - 62-year-old chiropractor John Williams from Pennsylvania has moved to a farmhouse with one and a half hectares of century-old olive groves on the outskirts of Senigallia, just a stone's throw from the sea, where he produces oil and fruit preserves with his wife and two teenage children. "I came to Marche on vacation and decided to stay - says the doctor - today I would not live anywhere else on earth." He could soon be accompanied by an army of compatriots after the influential bible of American retirees AARP (35.6 million subscribers) chose the Italian region among the "five earthly paradises" to live after retirement, along with Puerto Vallarta (Mexico), Languedoc-Roussillon region (France), Boquete (Panama), and Cascais (Portugal).

The reason: "Marche has everything: beautiful beaches, smiling vineyards, endless art and architecture, some of the best fish dishes in Italian cuisine, and even snowy mountains for winter sports". If all this is not enough, AARP journalist Barry Golson, author of Retirement without Borders and Gringos in Paradise, explains that "Marche has excellent weather, a good public health system, open-air opera festivals, and affordable prices". For millions of Italianophile baby boomers who have seen their savings evaporate with the Wall Street crisis, it is an intelligent alternative to the expensive Tuscany, "now prohibitively expensive all year round," AARP points out, and Umbria, "similarly expensive." It almost seems like an advertisement for a new Florida. An ironic coincidence after the heated controversies that erupted in Italy at the beginning of the year over the expensive commercial of Dustin Hoffman endorsing the Marche region, reading Giacomo Leopardi's poem "L'Infinito," getting the meter and words wrong and distorting it to the point of even inducing Mina to come out of her legendary exile to denounce it. Seen from America, even that flop has ended up helping the image of a region "trendy enough - writes AARP - to catch Hoffman as a testimonial." The star of Midnight Cowboy and Rain Man is certainly not the only one to declare himself "in love with that unparalleled land." The first to "discover it" was writer John Moretti, who in his 2004 book Living Abroad in Italy dedicated an entire chapter to Marche, with practical advice on how to open an agriturismo and a list of real estate agents. A year later, the New York Times published a long article titled Is Le Marche the Next Tuscany?, which remained at the top of the most-read pieces on its website for days. And riding the new passion of Americans is also superchef of Italian origin Lidia Bastianich, who has dedicated numerous episodes of her popular show Lidia's Italy to Marche cuisine. For chiropractor Williams, it is primarily a matter of numbers: "Excluding the cost of the house, $20,000 a year is enough to live there, although with a higher income, life is better." It seems almost impossible: $40 for dinner for two, rents starting at $600, and houses for sale for $150,000. The problem, if anything, is to hurry. Before Marche becomes «the new Umbria»"