Eight theatres in Italy's Marche region have joined UNESCO's World Heritage list: boxes were bought like property and left to the children

Italy has a region they call "the region of a hundred theatres". It's Marche, on the central stretch of the Adriatic coast. This summer, at its session in Busan, South Korea, UNESCO added to its World Heritage List a system of ten historic 18th- and 19th-century theatres in central Italy - eight of them are right here in Marche.

The story of these halls isn't a story of princes and cardinals. The theatres were built with the help of the townspeople themselves. Families could buy a box, become co-owners of part of the hall and then leave it to their children, like a flat or a field. Going to the theatre was a social event: you went to be seen, and the most interesting things didn't always happen on stage. Imagine a theatre box on the property deed, next to the house and the vineyard - and the long family arguments over who would inherit it.

The eight theatres in Marche are scattered across small towns with characters of their own. Teatro Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in Jesi bears the name of the composer, who was born there. Teatro Ventidio Basso is in Ascoli Piceno, Teatro Serpente Aureo in Offida, a town known for bobbin lace, and Teatro dell'Aquila in Fermo has five tiers of boxes around the stage. Then come Teatro Lauro Rossi in Macerata, Teatro Feronia in San Severino Marche, Teatro Gentile in Fabriano, a town linked to paper-making for centuries, and Teatro Bramante in Urbania, known for its ceramics.

The other two halls in the system are outside the region: Teatro Comunale in Imola, in Emilia-Romagna, and Teatro Sociale in Amelia, in Umbria. All of them still work today - opera, concerts, plays and festivals. They aren't museums with a rope across the door; they're living halls.

If you're planning a trip, Jesi is the natural starting point. Ascoli Piceno offers squares and travertine façades, Fermo an old town worth strolling slowly, and Macerata one of the oldest universities in the world and an astronomical clock on the Civic Tower. Nearby is Urbino, the Renaissance town that is also under UNESCO protection, and Recanati, birthplace of the poet Giacomo Leopardi.

The region isn't only a stage. The Conero Riviera has white cliffs and hidden coves, including Due Sorelle beach, and in the Frasassi caves, in a chamber called the Ancona Abyss, the whole of Milan Cathedral could reportedly fit. Marche is proof that heritage doesn't have to be a ruler's palace - sometimes it's a box that one family paid for and kept for generations.