Palazzo ducale di Gubbio

In 1384 Gubbio entered the domains of the Montefeltro. For the family residence are chosen the houses facing the cathedral, in the highest part of the city. It is Federico, born in the nearby castle of Petroia in 1422, to promote the reconstruction of the palace in Renaissance forms. He entrusts design to sienese Francesco by Giorgio Martini, who perhaps revisits a first idea of  Luciano Laurana.The only example of Renaissance architecture in a purely medieval city, the palace is distinguished by the architectural finesse and sophistication of the decorations, especially in the capitals, in the exhibitions of doors and chimneys that bear the emblems of Frederick and of the house, thus enabling them to circumscribe The period of construction between 1474 and the year of his appointment to Duke - and in 1482, when Federico dies and succeeds his son Guidobaldo. By then, the famous studio was similar to that of the Palace of Urbino, covered with panels inlaid by Florentine Giuliano da Maiano on Francesco di Giorgio's design and perhaps paintings by Pedro Berreguete. The latter, dismantled by the will of Vittoria, the last descendant of the Montefeltro della Rovere, married in 1637 to Ferdinando de 'Medici, first migrated to Florence and then to foreign collections. The wooden apparatus was sold in 1874 to Prince Massimo Lancellotti and then through the antique market at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where they arrived in 1939.In 2009, Palazzo Ducale was a valuable replica. In the interior rooms, accompanied by some original furnishings, an interesting collection of pictorial works depicts the main evolutionary phases of eugubian painting from the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries.On the ground floor you can access the area excavated beneath the courtyard where there are vestiges of pre-existing medieval structures.Complete the visit a section, made in the upper floors of the Palace, dedicated to the works of the Biennale d'Arte Contemporanea of  Gubbio; There are works by Leoncillo, Pomodoro, Castellani.