# The Italian Town That Hasn't Changed Since the Renaissance > Discover the Italian town that hasn't changed since the Renaissance: a living slice of the era, ancient streets and the real Italy, unhurried and untouched. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/ytalianskyi-horod-ne-yzmenyvshyisia-so-vremen-renessansa/ - Language: en - Published: 2025-11-10 - Categories: Culture, Historic Sites, Museums, Mountains, Tours, Italy --- In one of the most famous paintings in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, Federico da Montefeltro gazes at his wife, Battista Sforza, the pair standing before the landscape they ruled. Rolling hills climb toward volcano-like peaks crowned with towns. The rugged Apennines stretch across the horizon, while what is thought to be the Metauro River winds its way below. Painted by Piero della Francesca in 1472, it is one of the defining works of Renaissance art. And yet few of the foreign visitors who pass through the Uffizi have any idea about the landscape that inspired the painter Piero della Francesca. Today Urbino, a small university town in the Marche region of central Italy, is missing from most travel itineraries. But in the 15th Century it was a hub of the Renaissance. The ruler of this area, that very same Federico da Montefeltro, was one of Italy's most cultured leaders. Federico wasn't always seen that way. The illegitimate son of Urbino's previous ruler, as the story goes, he became a legendary mercenary who commanded private armies and led them to victory for whoever paid him the most. But when his half-brother was killed, possibly at Federico's own instigation, he seized power for himself. And perhaps to lay any doubts about his past to rest, he set about turning his town into a cultural center capable of rivaling Florence, 120 miles to the northwest across the Apennines. His court employed not only artists such as Piero della Francesca and Sandro Botticelli; it was also the birthplace of Raphael and of Donato Bramante, the architect of the Vatican. His library was so significant that it now belongs to the pope, and the Montefeltro court became the setting for one of the most famous books of the Renaissance. ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-1-2025.jpg) The court was so renowned that even after his death people kept flocking to Urbino. One member of his son's entourage, Baldassare Castiglione, wrote the Renaissance bestseller "The Book of the Courtier", essentially a gentler version of Machiavelli's "The Prince", about his time in Urbino. Today, six centuries on, the town looks almost exactly as Federico left it. Retro bars sit tucked beneath Renaissance porticoes. Steep streets built for horses rather than cars twist up and down the two hills the town is spread across. And the Palazzo Ducale, a fairytale castle built for Federico, its delicate twin towers softening its military fortifications, rises at the edge of the hill, visible for miles around. ## Living in the Renaissance ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-2-2025.jpg) Getting to Urbino today isn't much easier than it was in Federico's day. Unusually for Italy, there is no railway station here; the nearest is a 45-minute drive away in Pesaro. Traveling by bus or car from Florence means winding switchbacks as you cross the Apennines and pass through three different regions. The closest airport is a 90-minute drive away in Ancona, and the nearest major city is Bologna, more than two hours away. The upside is that while other Renaissance towns in Italy have been swallowed up by modern suburbs and smothered by mass tourism, Urbino has stayed blissfully untouched. "A tourist who comes to Urbino really has to want to come here, which is what makes the town unique in the way it has been protected from 'hit-and-run' tourism," says Luigi Gallo, director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, the art gallery housed inside Federico's ducal palace. "And its \[physical\] position has allowed the historic center to be preserved completely, sparing it from the large building projects that other major cities went through. Here you encounter the Renaissance in all its architectural beauty." Unesco, which granted Urbino World Heritage status, describes it as a place that "has preserved its Renaissance appearance to a remarkable extent... even the 18th and 19th-Century interventions left the Renaissance layout almost entirely untouched." It goes further, noting that even modern restoration work has always used the same Renaissance-era techniques. One reason for its preservation is that the Montefeltro clan died out in the 16th Century, plunging the town into decline. Another is that as a relatively small university town, it never had to lean on tourism, sustained instead by a stable economy built on resident students. A third? Its location. Stretched across two steep hills, it truly has nowhere to grow. "Of course, we have ugly university buildings and an ugly hospital. There are genuinely ugly parts. But the morphology and geographical \[constraints\] have preserved the town," says Francesca Bottacin, professor of art history at the University of Urbino. Unlike many other Italian cities, Urbino didn't experience a postwar industrial boom, she says, which saved it from the construction of ugly suburbs. That doesn't necessarily make life here easy. Only residents can drive into the town; everyone else has to park outside and climb the hill. Bottacin, who comes from the flat Veneto region, says that navigating the hilly town during snowy winters can be tricky, to put it mildly. And yet, she says, she is "addicted" to Urbino. "Anyone born within these walls who still lives and works there, as I do, builds a deep relationship with the town that can be as contradictory as a love affair," says Tiziano Mancini, who runs escape rooms in the town and sometimes hosts murder-mystery dinners in the Palazzo Ducale. "On one hand, you want to see it buzzing and full of tourists. On the other, you want to keep it all to yourself." He recommends a nighttime stroll "in silence, but never alone, because you're in the company of beauty, history and the thousands of personalities who lived here before you." Daniela Rossi, a local guide, believes there's no better place. "The historic center covers a little over a square kilometer \[0.4 square miles\], but packed into it is an enormous heritage that has left its mark on European history, culture, art and architecture," she says. Today she calls it "a place of peace and calm between art and culture." Back then, she adds, it was "a crossroads for the finest artists of the age." ## A Palace as Propaganda ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-3-2025.jpg) The building of this fairytale town is a story that mirrors the story of the Renaissance itself, when Italian rulers turned to classical texts and ideals to "revive" culture, and society along with it. An unusual path to power naturally calls for consolidating that power. And although new research suggests that Federico was in fact the legitimate grandson of the previous ruler rather than his illegitimate son (his connection would have been through his mother, which in those days counted for nothing), he still needed to leave his mark on the town. As it turned out, Federico was a deeply cultured man; as a child he lived in Venice and Mantua and received a first-class education. But as ruler of Urbino, together with his wife Battista Sforza and his probable brother Ottaviano Ubaldini, he built a court that revolved around culture. He constructed a palace that was as beautiful as it was impregnable, softening its garrison-style walls with balconies and those graceful towers. Within the walls was a handsome arched courtyard, gardens at the back and Italy's first public library, open to every citizen of Urbino. Upstairs, he commissioned artists such as Botticelli to create artfully inlaid doors. His study in one of the towers was lined with wooden panels rendered in trompe-l'oeil, showing off his mastery of both war and culture. And on the walls hung paintings by some of the most advanced, innovative artists of the day. They're still there. ## Raphael and Rome ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-4-2025.jpg) The Montefeltro court produced an incredible amount of cultural treasure. Famous artists came to work for Federico, 15th-Century stars such as Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello, along with (most likely) a young, up-and-coming Botticelli. Architects came too: Francesco di Giorgio Martini built Federico's fortresses, while local boy Donato Bramante (who would later design St Peter's Basilica in Rome, with Michelangelo working from his drawings) is credited with bringing Renaissance architecture to Milan, and later the High Renaissance style to Rome. Federico hosted mathematicians, astronomers and astrologers, the scientists of the age. Humanists and authors flocked to his court, including Leon Battista Alberti, who designed the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. One of his local court painters was Giovanni Santi, better known as the father of Raphael. In fact, Raphael's birthplace still stands in Urbino. A five-minute walk from the Palazzo Ducale, it is open to the public. Visitors can see the color-stained stone on which Santi ground his pigments. In the bedroom is a fresco of the Madonna and Child, thought to have been painted by a teenage Raphael. The Virgin Mary even wears a gauzy veil over her hair, echoing his masterpiece in the National Gallery in London, "The Madonna of the Pinks." Look out of Santi's kitchen window and the view is identical to the one Raphael grew up with: brick houses piled up on the steep slopes, those half-stepped, horse-friendly lanes (called piole), and glimpses of emerald hills beyond the edge of town. Would Raphael have become Raphael without Urbino? "'What if' is always tricky, but recent research on Raphael suggests that Urbino was fundamental to his vision of beauty," says Bottacin. "His work has a 'fifth sense' of harmony and perfect beauty, a classicism brought into the Renaissance. I think Urbino played a fundamental role in that. "We know that the early years are fundamental \[to development\], and Raphael would have grown up in this extraordinary court. "He was born after Federico's death, but Giovanni Santi still had his workshop. It was an amazing atmosphere, and perhaps it was that very spark that gave his work its extraordinary harmony." ## Walking the Renaissance, 500 Years On ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-5-2025.jpg) Federico's court was, in short, the perfect Renaissance setting. And today visitors can still feel it. Not far from Raphael's birthplace lies a rare fragment of life before Federico: the Oratorio di San Giovanni Battista, frescoed in the early 1400s by the local Salimbeni brothers. Painted in the Gothic style, the biblical scenes brim with everyday detail: a dog licking itself, a mother grabbing her fussy child, and followers tangling themselves in their clothes as they undress for baptism. The brotherhood that built the chapel in the 15th Century still exists today, as do others like it. "In this respect Urbino is unusual: the brotherhoods still exist, and they still do the charitable work they did in the 15th Century," says Bottacin. Tourists can visit their private chapels; on the way to the Salimbeni brothers' work you can step into the Oratorio San Giuseppe, with its 16th-Century grotto carved with a Nativity scene. You'll also spot plaques along the street (Via Barocci) marking the former homes of Renaissance celebrities, as well as the steep piole crossing your path. ## Inside the Palace ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-6-2025.jpg) Across from the side of town where Raphael lived, Federico's ducal palace dominates the other hill. Today the Palazzo Ducale is the National Gallery of the Marche region and the 28th most-visited museum in Italy. Once inside, you'll be puzzled as to why it isn't more popular; works by artists such as Raphael, Giovanni Santi, Titian, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca, mostly commissioned by Federico, hang on the walls. There's ceramics by the Florentine della Robbia brothers and, of course, those doors designed by Botticelli. Even this has barely changed since Federico's time; the original terracotta floor sags from centuries of use, and the fireplaces and doorways still bear his initials "FD" ("Federico Dux", or "Duke Federico"). ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-7-2025.jpg) Visitors can even climb one of those fairytale towers to watch the mist drifting over the hills in the distance, the very same view Federico himself had, and a landscape much like the one in the famous painting in the Uffizi. "The relationship between the town and the surrounding countryside is so well preserved; from the town you see nature, and from outside you see the Palazzo Ducale emerging in all its beauty from the landscape around it. I think that makes it unique in all of Italy," says Gallo, whose favorite artwork in the gallery is Piero della Francesca's "Madonna of Senigallia." ## A Lasting Legacy ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-168-8-2025.jpg) Federico's influence carried on for centuries. Beyond the artists who took what they had learned in Urbino to Rome and Milan, his idea of a public library took hold; in fact his collection was so special that it was quickly moved to the Vatican once the Montefeltro family died out. For Gallo, he was a true Renaissance man. "Federico represents that ideal of the Renaissance prince who combines the power of a leader with the culture of a humanist, and I think that's a model for politicians today," he says. "He was a great politician of the 15th Century, and you can see it clearly in how well his town has been preserved."