Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
Palazzo Ducale
Interesting facts
- Baldassare Castiglione wrote that Federico had furnished his palace so completely that it seemed less a palace than a whole city in the shape of one.
- The Torricini facade, facing outward over the valley, sets three stacked loggias shaped like triumphal arches between two slender towers, probably inspired by the arch of Castel Nuovo in Naples.
- Francesco di Giorgio Martini built a spiral ramp from the market square below, letting carts and horses climb up to the palace, with large stables halfway up.
- After Pope Sixtus IV raised Federico to duke, the initials FC for Federico Conte were plastered over and replaced with FD or FE DUX across the palace.
- Luciano Laurana gave the palace and town walls slanting faces so that cannonballs would glance off rather than break through.
- The capitals in the arcaded courtyard copy ancient Flavian models, and its cornices carry inscriptions in classical Roman capital letters.
- In 1717 and 1718 the duke's apartment was refitted to house James Stuart, the exiled Catholic claimant to the English throne, and his court.
- Until it became a national monument around 1889, part of the palace served as a prison, while other rooms housed a law court and a salt and tobacco store.
- The gilded leather and tapestries that once lined the walls are now scattered among museums worldwide; only the studiolo survives nearly intact.
- From 1889 to 1997 the palace was home to the Scuola del Libro, a school devoted to printing and the art of the book.
Why it is worth it
On a rocky spur above the hill town of Urbino, the Ducal Palace is one of the defining buildings of the Italian Renaissance, the seat of a court where painting, architecture and classical learning flourished under Duke Federico da Montefeltro. It was built for Federico da Montefeltro from around the middle of the fifteenth century, and with the historic centre of Urbino it has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.
Work began under the Florentine Maso di Bartolomeo, incorporating an existing palace. The difficult rock site then needed a specialist, and Luciano Laurana from Dalmatia was hired to build the massive substructure; he left before the living quarters were begun, and who designed the rest is not known for certain. Donato Bramante, a native of Urbino, may have been involved in completing it. The palace's most celebrated room is Federico's studiolo, a small study of about 3.6 by 3.35 metres whose walls are covered in wood intarsia that tricks the eye into seeing half-open cupboards full of books, instruments, armour and musical scores. Above the panels hung portraits of great thinkers, from Plato and Homer to Dante and Petrarch, painted by Joos van Wassenhove and reworked by Pedro Berruguete. Below it lie twin chapels, one Christian and one dedicated to the Muses, a pairing unusual for its time.
The palace was the setting of the conversations that Baldassare Castiglione placed there in 1507 in The Book of the Courtier. Today it houses the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, one of the great collections of Renaissance painting, with Piero della Francesca's Flagellation and Madonna di Senigallia, the Ideal City panel attributed to him, Raphael's La Muta, works by Paolo Uccello and Titian, and more. Restorations completed in 1985 also opened the palace's extensive underground spaces.
Urbino is a small university town in the Marche, built on a steep hillside; its university was founded in 1506, and Raphael's childhood home still stands in the town.
Getting there
The palace is in the historic centre of Urbino, roughly 30 km inland from Pesaro on the Adriatic coast. The nearest airport is Federico Fellini International Airport in Rimini (RMI), about 33 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Ducal Palace is a Renaissance building in the Italian city of Urbino in the Marche. One of the most important monuments in Italy, it's been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.
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