A Preserved Medieval City: Urbino

We drove a lot last week, covering half of Italy and enjoying a few of the gorgeous cities on the way to and from Lake Garda, where we live. One of these cities is Urbino, an intact medieval city at the top of a mountain overlooking the hills of the region of Marche. Pippin the Short, King of the Franks, (not a hobbit in Lord of the Rings) gifted Urbino to the Pope to add to his territory around 750 A.D. However, I loved thinking of Pippin and Frodo climbing up the giant mountain side to reach Urbino then traveling back to Rome to give it to the Pope.

The Main Entrance. I would love to live in that little room a the very top! It is an ideal location to write, with a view of the valley below.

Urbino: the Duomo in the middle and the Dukes Palace on the right

Inside the city it is super hilly like San Fran. Here you can see ridges for horses, or people to keep them from sliding on the ice.

It is difficult to accommodate modern conveniences in ancient cities.

A view of Urbino from the top of the main street looking down.

Where we live it is flat, foggy and seeing the hills and sunshine was such a treat! Urbino is really old, its construction began around the 6th century mainly as a strategic defense point for Roman soldiers involved in the Gothic Wars. It took us about one hour to drive around the cold icy roads up to the walled city, so I am sure Gothic warriors would have been effectively stopped by cold, or terrible weapons they used then (boiling acid, balls of flame, hurling boulders, etc). However, the day we went to Urbino was idyllic, except for the cold.

An Old Map of Urbino

As Urbino savored over the centuries it became a town where many painters and artists developed their skills. This is the hometown to Vatican painter, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, otherwise known as Rafael, or Ralph by his friends.

That is where Ralphaello was born and raised before he headed off to Rome and Florence.

Urbino also became a hot spot during the Renaissance for painters. I love artistic cities in Italy. Some cities have more of a war past, some feel like an abandoned old-western town, others like they have layers of history that didn't stop building and then there are the artistic cities that might have had a few bloody wars but more art and creativity than wars. These are my favorite. Urbino is that kind of city. In fact at the Galleria Nazionale di Marche, in Urbino, they host the largest and most important collection of Renaissance art in the world.

They host the prestigious art academy called the Accademia di Belli Arti di Urbino.

If living in Italy has taught me anything, it is to appreciate art and creativity in different forms. I have loved the cobbled streets and the shapes people have made with the rocks, I love that houses are built in traditional and ultra modern ways. I love that cities are overflowing with art, even if some of it has faded over the centuries. Art tells a story, it has a purpose and reading and learning about the ancient history and meaning of art has been one of my favorite things here. Oh, perhaps my most favorite thing about the art here, the ecclesiastical art. Most people in Italy and the world were illiterate up until a century or so ago. Churches have really large and gorgeous paintings telling the story of Mary, the birth and life of Jesus, the saints who can pray with us and of heaven. Illiterate people just had to sit on one of the stones of the church and look at a painting for a while to see what it was about. The best part about Church paintings is the level of imagination that the painter needed to have to create the murals: cherubs, devils, prophesies, and the miracles of saints are all illustrated so well in the paintings. My favorite of all has been Saint John. Why? Well, I didn't know that he was decapitated until I came across a marble dinner size plate with a marble head on it and wondered "What is that?!"
The art here has inspired me to get back into drawing and I have loved taking my drawing pad and pen around (even if my drawings come out like hash marks), and also taking my camera with me every single day. Sometimes there are incredible historical things that just jump out at me begging to have their picture taken and other days it can be something incredible from nature like frost on a leaf, my neighbor (the cow), his hay or a cute alley cat.

Nevertheless, I am grateful that beauty surrounds me in the natural world as well as in the artistic world.