Good Things From Italy - Le Cose Buone d'Italia

Urbino in Le Marche had its heyday in the Renaissance, and its appearance hasn’t changed much since then. For this reason Urbino is often considered one of the most adorable hill towns in Italy. [...]

Via Mariano Pallottini

È il prototipo del palazzo perfetto: mettere piede nel palazzo ducale di Urbino – che Federico da Montefeltro si fece costruire prima da  Francesco Laurana, e poi da Francesco di Giorgio Martini – è come mettere piede in un luogo di immensa bellezza ma assolutamente vivibile. Ci sono alcuni particolari rivelatori di questa perfezione che è molto più che perfezione estetica. Il Palazzo, costruito su uno dei due colli che dominano Urbino e la facciata verso valle, ad esempio, evoca l’idea di una roccaforte, con la struttura dei due torrioni che dovrebbe presidiare l’edificio. Ma i torrioni sono stati trasformati da Laurana nei celebri “torricelli”, agili e stretti, del tutto inefficienti dal punto di vista difensivo, ma così accoglienti per chi dal basso li vede svettare.[...]

Via Mariano Pallottini

Part of Urbino's charm is that it doesn't have an airport or train station. But it's still easy to reach. Here's how to get to Urbino...cheaply.

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Via Mariano Pallottini

More and more travel bloggers add Urbino to the destinations mentioned in their publications. In fact, following from about 10 years everything that is posted about Le Marche, I'm realizing how the location is polarizing an increasing interest.
This is an example.
Urbino is mentioned inside a list of Most beautiful places in Italy together with:

The Amalfi Coast described as one of Italy's top tourist destinationsThe Aeolian Islands the collection of small, volcanic islands clustered between Naples and SicilyThe Italian Lakes region The Dolomite Mountains
In company of these 4 extraordinary locations, Urbino sees skyrocketing the value of its shares.
Via Mariano Pallottini

In Canavaccio di Urbino, a suburb of the university town, a factory welcomes visitors with a sign that reads “Artista del Legno”—Artist of Wood. Inside, countless hand-crafted, three-dimensional wooden pictures hang on the walls of the hallway and offices. The intricate inlays depict scenes of towns like Urbino, farmers, musical instruments, and the Cross; the products of patience, time and quiet craftsmanship. But behind a closed door at the end of the lobby, come the harsh noises of enormous machines. Nowadays, the factory makes laser-cut plexiglass and wooden goods such as display shelves and boxes.

Via Mariano Pallottini

Our journey through Marche begins from the Piceno area near the coastal area of

San Benedetto del Tronto, a beautiful town proudly flaunting its wonderful promenade shaded by palm trees. Leaving behind the sea of and moving up the hills we arrive in the town of ...Aquaviva Picena huddled around its medieval fortress which was once the stronghold of the Dukes of Aquaviva. This is where the pagliarolle are still handmade.  We dine and we begin with fricantò a type of vegetable based ragù cooked for a very long time.  Another typical Aquaviva Picena is the ncip-nciap, rabbit, chopped, stewed and pan fried with oil, olives, garlic, rosemary and S & P.  From Aquaviva Picena, we move on to Ascoli Piceno, home to one of the most beautiful Italian squares; Piazza del Poppolo, surrounded by the harmonious colonnade of different style arches.  If you happen to be around on the first Sunday of August, you should not miss the Quintana parade, a magnificent nightly parade that takes place in Piazza del Popollo.  Time to sit down at the table.  As a first course, maccheroncini del Campofilone cooked with a chicken giblet sauce.  Ascoli Piceno is the perfect place to enjoy the original Olive all’Ascolana, olives stuffed with a mixture of meats, eggs, cheese and nutmeg.  For dessert cicerchiata, balls coated with honey and caramelized sugar, prepared with dried fruits.  To take in a breathtaking view of this wonderful town, just take a stroll in the Parco della Rimembranza. We now head for Fermo, renowned for it footwear and hat manufacturing. And from here we travel to Macerata with its Piazza Della Libertà which seems to be the local inhabitant’s living room.  In Macerata we try 2 local cold meats:  The ciauscolo, a soft pâté salami, and the mazzafegato, a type of ciauscolo combined with pigs liver. Now we move to Ancona and its port.  With the sea behind us, we are in Piazza della Republica.  A short walk uphill and we reach Pizza del Plebiscito, we pay homage to a symbol of the Marche cuisine: the vincisgrassi, very rich and tasty pasta accompanied by a delicious Verdicchio de Castelli di Jeseiwine.  And now for the brodetto al anconatana, the traditional Ancona fish soup.  The brodetto all’anconetana has a very dense consistency and is served with lightly toasted bread.  After a pleasant walk we get to the Cathedral of San Ciriaco, on the Guasco hill.  Leaving Ancona we travel to Arcevia, where the romantic Leopardi Garden is an absolute must.  Returning towards the Adriatic Coast we reach Pesaro.  Pesaro is called the city of the four M s: Mare, Monti, Musiche and Maioliche.  (sea, mountains, music and ceramics) and it is also the native town of Giocchini Rossini.  Its seafront promenade is favored by the locals, and it is from this very promenade we leave Pesaro forUrbino, a prime example of a Renaissance city declared UNESCO world heritage site. To communicate the overwhelming emotions felt on arriving in Urbino, we use the words of someone with a deep rooted love for this town: Carlo Bo, who was the rector of Urbino Universtiy, named after him, for 54 years.  He said ” Anyone who arrives in Urbino unaware of its history and it importance is met with total astonishment, or rather, a miracle.  Set in the hilly landscape that support the city’s access roads is a fairy-like mansion totally unscathed by the passing of time”.  The mansion Carlo Bo refers to its Palazzao Ducale, a Renaissance masterpeice, with its Torricini and it Cortile D’Onore.  The Marche Nattional Gallery is located here.  The historic center of Urbino is entirely constructed in brick and is surrounded by defense walls. Intense hunger is calling for a break.  We decide to pay tribute to the Urbino DOP Casciotto, made from a mixture of sheep and cow milk.  

Our journey through the Marche has come to an end!

Via Mariano Pallottini

As important as food is, most of us know little about where it comes from. A family of organic farmers outside Urbino is trying to change that as all the "FATTORIE DIDATTICHE" of the Region. “Children think that when you take milk of the cow, it is cold, not hot, because they always take cold milk from the fridge,” says Monserrat Podgornik, the mother of the family. She believes children should understand that when a calf drinks milk, “it has to be hot in the natural way like your mama, no?”

Via Mariano Pallottini

Urbino è la città del Rinascimento, non c'è che dire. Il suo centro storico, perfettamente conservato, dal '98 è stato inserito dall'Unesco nel patrimonio dell'Umanità. Situata in collina, nel basso Montefeltro, questa cittadina ha goduto dell'intelligenza, della lungimiranza e della generosità del duca Federico da Montefeltro. Questo straordinario e indimenticato mecenate riuscì a convogliare nel suo ducato, nei 40 anni della sua reggenza, artisti e intellettuali contemporanei rendendo Urbino il fulcro vivace e stimolante della cultura rinascimentale. Ancora oggi, i visitatori passeggiando tra i suoi vicoli, i bastioni, i palazzi, le chiese possono avvertire le atmosfere di metà '400, ammirando un intatto patrimonio architettonico e quell'impianto urbanistico di "città ideale" caro a Federico. Iniziamo il nostro tour? [...]

Via Mariano Pallottini

Another charming, romantic Italian small town set on a hill in the  Le Marche region. And it has so much to offer – stunning views of the Apennines and Renaissance culture (let us mention that Raphael used to live here and his house is now a museum that is a must-see) The town itself is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. We warmly recommend an espresso at Caffè Basili  in the Urbino’s Piazza della Repubblica so you have enough energy to visit Albornoz Fortress and capture some postcard-perfect photos!

Via Mariano Pallottini

Head south-east from Bologna an hour and you find yourself in Le Marche, a region defined by its rolling, green patchwork of land where towns perch on hilltops and red-tiled roofs amble downwards as far as the eye can see.
I found myself in Le Marche by turn of fate. I wasn’t supposed to be in Europe right now. I’m not quite sure where I was supposed to be – because that is how my lack of plans work, but in the midst of Europe’s prelude to the depths of winter? Uh-uh. No. Not me.
Yet, my plan to sell all my worldly goods in just one week (oh, the optimism – these items have been languishing in storage for three years), failed quickly. And so I lingered in England for longer than expected – which put me in exactly the right spot for an opportune invitation to Le Marche.
Did I want to come and explore the hilltop town of Urbino? The home of world-famous painter Raffaello? The place where Italian culture cuts deep through the community old and new? A student town so full of life it can’t be quietened, and you wouldn’t want it to be? A city, so small I’d call it a town, complete with all of the trappings of stereotypical Italian local life – the café culture, the cobbled streets, the makeshift markets held when produce is rife? Did I want to get under the skin of this city that was in the running for European Capital of Culture in 2019? [...]

Via Mariano Pallottini

Italy is a country that is jammed packed with famous art. Here are 10 masterpieces you should see.

 

Michelangelo’s David - Accademia Gallery, Florence

Sistine Chapel - Vatican City

Capitoline Wolf - Musei Capitolini in Rome

Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel - Padua

Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper - refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan.

Mantegna’s Dead Christ - Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan

Raphael’s Rooms - Vatican

Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro by Titian - Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli - Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesca - Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino

Via Mariano Pallottini

The one-time cultural capital of the Renaissance lures fewer visitors than its rival cities across the Apennines. People don’t know what they’re missing, says Nick Trend.
The new exhibition that opened at the National Gallery today showcases the work of the virtuoso late-Renaissance painter, Federico Barocci. Highly prized in his lifetime, he was then half-forgotten by succeeding generations, only to be rediscovered centuries later. In a way, the same is true of Urbino, his home town, and also birthplace of the more enduringly-famous Raphael.
It is an idyllic hill town where houses and palaces of weathered brick and pantiles cluster around steep narrow streets, with misty mountains stretching mysteriously beyond, like the background of a Leonardo portrait. But, because it is on the opposite side of the Apennines to Florence and Siena, Perugia and Assissi, like Barocci, Urbino has been half-forgotten by tourists and art lovers.
They are missing a treat. In its time – the 15th and 16th centuries – this was one of the cultural capitals of the Renaissance. Piero della Francesca came here to paint and write on perspective , as did Ucello, and Raphael’s father, and the great architects Laurana and Martini.
In short, this matches any hill town in Tuscany or Umbria, with a fraction of the visitors. Prices are lower, the sights less crowded and the people friendlier. Go this spring, while the peace lasts, after getting a taste for the Barocci’s brilliant paintings at the National Gallery.
Where to stay (click)
Arrival

9pm - Take in the evening passeggiata around the Piazza della Republica, for a first impression of this university town with a young, laid-back feel. Just around the corner is the Taverna Fornarina (4), serving traditional specialities in a relaxed, family-run atmosphere. (Here, and in all the recommended restaurants below, you can have a good meal for 30 euros including wine). If you want to stay up late with the young crowd, the current in place to drink is Bunker 83 (5) on via Nuova, just off the piazza.

Day one

10am - Explore the Ducal Palace (6) and the National Gallery of Le Marche (palazzoducaleurbino.it; entrance €5). The palace is one of the great Italian buildings of the 15th century – the central courtyard is particularly elegant, with fine Corinthian capitals around the arcades. Built by the town’s great patron, Duke Frederico of Montefeltro, it is a rambling pile which appears to shore up the western side of the town. Its rooms include a first-class collection of works by Raphael, Piero della Francesca, Uccello, Titian and Barocci. But the highlight for me is the Duke’s tiny studiolo lined with brilliantly effective trompe-l’oeil intarsia (inlaid wood) depicting shelves, books, music instruments and animals. It is one of only two such rooms to survive from the Italian Renaissance.1pm - The palace cafe, just off the main courtyard, is a good place for a drink and a light sandwich lunch.

 

2pm - After lunch, pop into the cathedral, immediately next door to the palace. The 16th-century church was substantially rebuilt after an earthquake in 1789 with a grand neo-classical facade. It is home to three of Barocci’s paintings: a couple of early works, and a great Last Supper which, when it returns from the exhibition at the National Gallery in London, will hang once more in the Ducal Chapel next to the high altar (a copy is currently on display). Next, walk down to Raphael’s birthplace (7), stopping on the way at the Church of San Francesco (8), which has another great Barocci altarpiece, the Pardon of St Francis. Near the main west door are two marble grave slabs laid next to each other - one is the grave of Barocci, the other of Raphael’s parents. Raphael, Urbino's most famous son3pm - A few paces up the hill is where Raphael’s parents lived and he spent his early years. His father, Giovanni Santi, was a court painter to the Duke and set up his studio here in this smart 15th-century house on one of the town’s main streets. Raphael was born here in 1483 and trained at home at least until the age of 11, when his father died. There is a small mural attributed to the boy painter in one room, but the house is chiefly interesting as an atmospheric 15th-century home/workshop.4.30pm - Enjoy the late afternoon sunshine in the lovely, quiet shade of the walled Botanical Garden (9), which is 200 years old and maintained by the university. The entrance is on Via Bramante.8pm - Enjoy your evening meal at La Trattoria del Leone (10) (0039 0722 329894; latrattoriadelleone.it). Be sure to book as there are just a few tables in two, small, simple dining rooms. Specialities include rabbit with olives, bacon, sausages, passatelli and roast pork. It has a particularly good local wine list.

Day two

10am - Spend the morning exploring the narrow streets and enjoying the glimpses of quiet courtyards, and the sudden surprising views of the hills beyond. Try also to squeeze in a visit to one or two of the little oratory churches. The oratories were the chapels of wealthy religious confraternities who were influential during the Renaissance. Best are the John the Baptist Oratory (11), with highly-colourful frescos of the life of the saint painted by the Salimbeni brothers in 1416; and the Oratory of St Joseph, with its lifesize 16th-century Nativity scene sculpted in plaster and set in a natural grotto.1pm - Lunch at Antica Osteria della Stella (12) (0039 0722 320228; anticaosteriadalastella.com), an ancient inn that claims to have hosted Raphael and Piero della Francesca. There is a lovely, beamed dining room and white linen tablecloths specialising in local pasta dishes such as cappelletti in chicken broth, tagliatelle with white truffle or gamey sauces.

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Via Mariano Pallottini

Within the vast halls and imposing galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum, well-hidden from the casual visitor, resides the finest Italian Renaissance room in America. The studiolo from Gubbio (e.c. Umbria), in Le Marche region of Italy and the former southern capital of the Montefeltro lands, is a marvel of the Renaissance woodworker's skill.
This studiolo, which tricks the eye with its seeming three-dimensionality of fictive cabinets, objects you could grab, and projecting benches, proved to be the final architectural triumph created for Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482)
Richly decorated in intarsia work, it was a small bookroom and place of private contemplation, the setting for intimate discussions between the ruler and a privileged visitor. The construction of Federico's first studiolo, still in situ in the Urbino palace, began in 1476. From this time, the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini was in charge of all of Federico's construction projects.
In dramatically expanding his father's modest Gubbio residence, Federico had extended it toward the local cathedral while leaving a cathedral plaza between the buildings. This constrained the eastern wall in an eccentric angle, and the studiolo, installed within the odd angle of this wall, thereby acquired its disproportionate, rhomboid shape.
Like its kin, the Gubbio studiolo is a marvel of inlaid woodwork, a triumph of the intarsiatore, the artisan in inlay. Many types of wood are required—spindle-wood, bog oak, cherry, walnut, pear and mulberry—including wood stained by fungus, producing a polychrome palette; these permit the full development of patterns and colors that inform the illusionistic results of three-dimensional depth, shadows and perspective. Two elaborately coffered ceilings, in gold and polychrome, crown the main section and the window alcove. The blank walls above the intarsia wainscoting once held allegories of the liberal arts and portraits of the Famous Men whom Federico emulated.
Created in the Florentine workshop of the brothers Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, the studiolo was installed in Gubbio from 1480 until 1483. The final panels, installed after Federico's death, reference Guidobaldo, but virtually all the panels reflect Federico's life, interests and achievements. The intarsia panels "read" clockwise from the left of the doorway. The prime viewing site is in the center, facing the long wall, with one's back to the window alcove; the Order of the Garter dominates the view. The viewer's ideal height, 5-foot-6, incidentally tells us how tall Federico was.
Federico's personal military, scientific and literary interests parade before us: fictive cabinets partially ajar display arms and armor, armorials, scientific devices, musical instruments and scores, documents and writing tools, caged songbirds and many, many books. Some items spill out of the cabinets or rest on equally fictive benches, while others recede into the shadows. The Latin inscriptional frieze extols the merits of approaching Learning with humility. Light comes from the principal window in the alcove and from two eyebrow windows high up in the same "eastern" wall. A patterned, tiled floor completes the ensemble. The setting mimics the shapes and orientation of the now-bare stone room in Gubbio.

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Via Mariano Pallottini