I have never been so grateful for a sat nav in my entire life, and I say that as someone who once got lost in their own local Tesco car park. The drive from Ancona airport to Fano should have taken forty minutes, but thanks to my spectacular misreading of a roundabout sign, we ended up touring the back lanes of the Marche countryside for the better part of two hours. My partner sat in silence, which is always worse than shouting. The olive groves were lovely, of course, but after the sixth identical grove, even beauty becomes something of a taunt.

We arrived at the property in late October, when the summer crowds had long since packed up their inflatable lilos and headed home. This, I now realise, was the entire point. The owner, a cheerful woman called Luisa, greeted us with a bottle of Verdicchio and what I can only describe as sympathetic eyes. She had clearly watched many British people arrive flustered over the years. The wine was cold and crisp and tasted of the sea breeze that was already picking up as the afternoon faded. I drank mine perhaps too quickly, standing on the terrace and watching the last warm light catch the red-tiled roofs of Fano stretching down towards the Adriatic.

The villa itself sat on a gentle slope above the town, surrounded by gardens that were in that particular state of autumnal dishevelment. The roses were doing their final, slightly desperate blooming. The lavender had gone woody and grey. A persimmon tree near the pool dropped its fruit onto the paving stones with soft, irregular thuds, like a slow heartbeat. Luisa apologised for the mess, but I found something comforting in it. There is an honesty to a garden in autumn that high summer lacks. It is not trying to impress anyone.

The pool was covered, naturally, though my partner did lift a corner of the tarpaulin to check the water temperature with the optimistic delusion that defines our nation. The resulting shriek could probably be heard in Pesaro. October in Marche is not swimming weather, not unless you are one of those hardy Germans one sees striding into Baltic waves in November. We are not those people. We retreated inside to discover that the villa's thick stone walls held the afternoon warmth beautifully, and that someone had left the heating on low, anticipating our chilled arrival.

That evening we walked down into Fano proper, taking the winding path that Luisa had recommended rather than the road. The darkness came early, as it does at that time of year, and with it a particular quality of silence that I had forgotten existed. No insects. No distant music from beach bars. Just the occasional rustle of something small in the hedgerow and our own footsteps on the compacted earth. We passed a vineyard where the harvest was already in, the vines stripped back to their architectural bones, and I felt that peculiar autumn melancholy that is not quite sadness but something adjacent to it. The awareness of endings.

Fano itself was quiet in the most pleasant sense. The arcades of the old town, which I imagine are shoulder-to-shoulder in August, held only scattered locals walking dogs and the odd cyclist. We found a trattoria open near the harbour, one of those places that does not bother with a menu because everyone is assumed to know what they want. The waiter brought us brodetto, the local fish stew, which tasted of saffron and tomato and the particular depth that comes from a long, slow simmer. He asked where we were staying, and when I described the villa, he nodded with the satisfaction of someone confirming a good choice. "Bella in autunno," he said. Beautiful in autumn. I agreed, though at that moment I think I was mostly agreeing with the wine.

Walking back up the hill later, full and slightly foolish from the second bottle we definitely did not need, I stopped to look at the stars. The clarity of the autumn sky here is something else entirely. No humidity haze, no light pollution from the absent holidaymakers. Just the cold, distant light of things that do not care about your roundabout confusion or your minor disappointments or the particular way you fail to read signs. My partner took my hand, which was cold, and we stood there for a moment before continuing up to the warmth of the stone walls waiting for us.

I think sometimes we choose the wrong seasons for places, chasing the approved months, the guaranteed sunshine. But there is something to be said for arriving when a place has stopped performing for you, when it is simply itself, persimmons falling and all. I would not have understood Fano in August. In October, slightly lost and properly fed, I think I came close.