THE successor of the ancient Umbrian Tifernate and the Roman Tibernium, Città di Castello was a commune, free at times but at others subject to the papacy, to Perugia and to Florence. Braccio Fortebraccio of nearby Montone took the city in 1422 and later the Vitelli family secured the signoria. Papal suzerainty was reasserted by Cesare Borgia, but the Vitelli remained in effective control for much of the Cinquecento. The place paid a heavy price during the French occupation, losing Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, which was taken to Milan, and other masterpieces. But there is still much to see within the irregular rectangle of the brick city walls to the north-east of the river Tiber.
The civic and religious heart of Città di Castello is the Piazza Gabriotti. The Gothic Palazzo Comunale of 1334–52 by Angelo da Orvieto was never completed, and is memorable not least because so much of the eroded rusticated masonry is original. Beside it is the much-remodelled Duomo, with a beautiful Gothic sculptured portal on the north front facing the square. The interior was reconstructed during the Renaissance. The cathedral museum contains the remarkable twelfth-century silver-gilt altar front associated with Pope Celestine II, as well as early Christian silver found at Canoscio. Rosso Fiorentino’s visionary Transfiguration, painted with evident haste after the Sack of Rome in 1527, formerly almost inaccessible in the transept, loses in impact now that it can no longer be seen from below.
Cathedral, north door (detail), relief of Mercy.
Just within the southern line of the town wall is the Palazzo Vitelli alla Cannoniera, built for Alessandro Vitelli, who initially called in the younger Sangallo, between 1521 and 1532; it now houses the Pinacoteca Comunale. The museum used to be little visited, and the custodian got so accustomed to my turning up alone or with fellow guests that he just handed me the keys. Things now are very different. The collection is admirably displayed, and justice is done to some very remarkable things: the noble Maestà by one of Duccio’s most intelligent associates, known appropriately as the Master of Città di Castello; a fine Madonna by Spinello Aretino; Signorelli’s dramatic Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian; and the standard that is the only one of the commissions awarded to the young Raphael painted for this to remain in the city. Recent additions include the Ruggieri collection with de Chirico’s Piazza d’Italia. Much of the original decoration of the palace survives, including a series of accomplished coastal landscapes set in grotteschi by Cristoforo Gherardi, who came from Borgo San Sepolcro, in the salone. The sgraffito decoration of the garden front is a rare survival.
Elegant as the palace is, it was evidently upstaged by the much larger Palazzo Vitelli a Porta Sant’Egidio, the city’s main east gate, which was designed for Paolo Vitelli by Vasari. The Bolognese Prospero Fontana was called in to decorate the main salone with appropriately pompous scenes from the history of the family. Altogether more congenial are the murals in a loggia of the annexed Palazzina, now used by a bank whose officials are, at least in my experience, tolerant of sightseers; these also are by Gherardi.
Those who are drawn to the area for the work of Piero della Francesco may wish to see the only signed panel by Giovanni da Piamonte, on the basis of which he has been identified as an assistant of the master at Arezzo. Dated 1456, this shows the Madonna and Child between Saints Florido and Filippo Benizzi. Generally covered as an object of veneration, this is in an oratory in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in the northern part of the town.
Pinacoteca: Luca Signorelli, Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (detail), c. 1498.