Urbino

Urbino's commune enjoyed some independence until around 1200, when it passed to the House of Montefeltro. The townspeople rebelled and allied with Rimini in 1228, but the Montefeltro returned and held the town until 1508, leading the Ghibelline, pro-imperial party in the Marche and Romagna. The papal legate Albornoz built a fortress on the hilltop in the 14th century.

The town's golden age came under Federico da Montefeltro, a condottiero who ruled as duke from 1444 to 1482. He rebuilt the family residence as the Ducal Palace, begun by the Dalmatian architect Luciano Laurana, and filled his court with painters, scholars and books; Raphael was born here in 1483, the son of the court painter Giovanni Santi. Cesare Borgia seized the duchy in 1502, and from 1508 it passed to the Della Rovere dukes, who added new walls, encouraged the maiolica workshops and in 1523 moved the court to Pesaro, beginning a long decline. The university was founded in 1506. In 1626 Pope Urban VIII absorbed the duchy into the Papal States, and much of the palace's art left as the dowry of Vittoria della Rovere when she married into the Medici.

On 8 September 1860 Piedmontese troops entered the town and the last papal soldiers surrendered, and Urbino joined Italy. During the Second World War about 10,000 works from Italian museums were hidden from the Nazis in the fortress of Sassocorvaro nearby, and the town was freed in August 1944. From the 1950s the architect Giancarlo De Carlo worked with the university and the town on a plan that rescued the decaying centre and built new colleges on the surrounding hills. The town is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its Renaissance legacy.

Urbino's culture is still that of its Renaissance court and its university. The Ducal Palace, with Federico's studiolo inlaid with wood and its twinned Christian chapel and pagan Temple of the Muses, is the centre of the town's identity, and the National Gallery of the Marche inside it holds Piero della Francesca's Flagellation, works by Raphael and Paolo Uccello, Van Wassenhove's Last Supper with portraits of the Montefeltro court, and a late Resurrection by Titian. Small oratories hide frescoes and stucco work, from the Salimbeni brothers' 1416 cycle in the Oratory of St John to Federico Brandani's Nativity of 1545 in the Oratory of St Joseph.

The town has a long craft tradition. Simple wares were made here in the 15th century, but after 1520 the Della Rovere dukes encouraged a maiolica industry that exported across Italy, first in the istoriato style, painted with narrative scenes taken from engravings. In the early 20th century the Scuola del Libro, a school of book arts, added to the town's artistic life.

The university, founded in 1506, shapes daily life, filling the bars of Piazza della Repubblica in term time. The town's best-loved festival is the Festa dell'Aquilone, a kite contest between the districts held on the first weekend of September since 1955.

About 14,000 people live in the comune of Urbino, which is also joint capital of the province of Pesaro and Urbino and the seat of an archbishop. In term time thousands of students swell the town, and the university is central to the local economy. Housing shortages for students have been a recurring issue since the university began to grow in the early 20th century.

Most residents live in the newer districts and villages outside the walls, while the old town holds the university buildings, offices, shops, bars and student flats. Life follows the academic calendar as much as the seasons: crowded and young from autumn to spring, quieter in summer when the students leave and visitors arrive. The town lies in the southern Montefeltro, an area of medium-high seismic risk, and dozens of earthquakes have been recorded here over the centuries; one in 1789 brought down the cathedral dome. Beyond the walls, the student colleges that Giancarlo De Carlo designed near the Capuchin church, completed in the early 1980s, are often cited as architecture that merges with the landscape.

Urbino's everyday food is the crescia, a thin flatbread made in the Marche and Umbria that probably shares an ancestry with the piadina of Romagna. Urbino's version is made with flour, eggs, water, lard, salt and pepper, and eaten hot with ham, cheese, sausage or wild herbs. The local cheese is casciotta d'Urbino, a mild cheese made in the province from about 70–80 per cent sheep's milk and the rest cow's milk; local legend says its name came from a civil servant's mispronunciation of caciotta.

Ciauscolo, a very soft salume typical of the Marche that can be spread on bread, is a regional speciality, and truffles come from Acqualagna, one of Italy's main truffle centres, not far away. Wines from Verdicchio, the white grape grown mainly in the Marche, and the region's reds are poured in the town's bars and trattorias, many of them in old cellars along the streets that climb from the main square.