Every year on 6 January, I find myself drawn to the Renaissance town of Urbania, in the elegantly rolling hills of the central Italian region of Marche. Located around an hour south-west of coastal Pesaro – which Italy has crowned its Capital of Culture for 2024 – barely 6,000 residents live inside Urbania’s medieval walls.

Yet tens of thousands more are drawn to its winding stone alleys, elegant loggias, majolica workshops and monumental Ducal Palace at the start of each year. Yet it is not the well-preserved architecture that lures us to this offbeat town – it is the Befana festival.