Find out Urbino
Info
Urbino is one of the most famous cities of art in the Marche hinterland. Inside we find palaces, museums, churches and small squares from various eras, which show the development of the ancient city over the centuries. Located among the rolling hills of the Marches, Urbino offers a breathtaking panorama, full of vineyards and sunflower fields. For these reasons Urbino is also defined as the "Ideal City of the Renaissance": in fact, the historical centre, in its perspective rigor, embodies the paradigm of the perfect city shared by Federico di Montefeltro and the artists of the time. Urbino has been considered a UNESCO heritage site since 1998.
What to see
The most representative structure of Urbino is certainly the Palazzo Ducale, which hosted the Montefeltro family for years. However, calling it a "palace" is very reductive, in fact it can be considered a "city within a city" given its typical form of fortified cities. Inside we find about 80 rooms that house the National Gallery of the Marches, with works by Raphael, Titian, Piero della Francesca and many other artists. The room that contains the Studiolo del Duca di Montefeltro is certainly very suggestive, a room completely covered with wooden inlays which, thanks to the skilful use of wood and perspective, make the figures appear three-dimensional. A few steps from the Doge's Palace is the Duomo di Urbino, a neoclassical cathedral with three naves, which preserves numerous valuable paintings. Attached to this is the Albani Diocesan Museum, where you can admire the most varied ecclesiastical furnishings, from the 13th century to the present day. Urbino also hosts the birthplace of Raphael, where the painter was born and learned the first notions of painting from his father Giovanni Santi; in the house there are still the furnishings and some works by both artists, including the Madonna and Child, considered one of the first works by Raphael painted together with his father. Well hidden by the twentieth-century facade, among the streets of the city we find the Oratory of San Giovanni, which beyond the entrance door presents the cycle of frescoes by the brothers Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni from San Severino, representing the scenes of classical iconography. Finally, we can see the Oratory of San Giuseppe, which takes its name from the brotherhood of illustrious Urbino citizens who met there: inside there is a Crib Chapel with life-size sixteenth-century statues, carved in pumice stone and stucco, characterized by a strong realism and incredible attention to detail.
History
The ancient Urbinum Metaurense was an important municipality in Roman times. Occupied by the Goths, besieged and taken by Belisario (538), it was then fortified and enlarged by King Liutprando. Included in the donations of the Carolingians to the Church, the Swabians gave it as a feud to the Montefeltro family (1213). With Guido il Vecchio di Montefeltro and his successors it became the center of a vast state that extended as far as Cagli, Gubbio, Casteldurante and which in 1443 was elevated to a duchy (Duchy of Urbino) by Pope Eugene IV. The Montefeltros, who dominated the city and the duchy, except for brief interruptions, until 1508, enriched it with admirable monuments, surrounded it with walls, endowed it with a university and a famous library. In the hands of the Della Rovere family since 1508, when the dynasty died out in 1631, the dukedom of U. passed to the Church; from that moment the city declined rapidly. Taken by the French in February 1797, it was part of the Roman Republic and the Italian Kingdom. After the brief occupation by G. Murat (March-May 1815), it returned under papal authority; in 1860 it became part of the Kingdom of Italy.
