FOR the sightseer who likes to see groups of related buildings or works of art, the Marche is rich in possibilities. Commissions of the rival courts of the Malatesta, the Montefeltro and the Varano can be seen in Rimini, at Urbino and at Camerino. And as such families well knew their need for defence, the area is equally rich in military buildings of the Renaissance.
The most celebrated of these is perhaps the Rocca at Sasso Corvaro, designed by Francesco di Giorgio but altered in the eighteenth century, which seems to float effortlessly above the little town at its feet, and owes its existence to the struggle between the Montefeltro and the Malatesta. Its owners, the Brancaleoni, adhered to the former and would a century later remodel their ancient castle at Piobbico as a Renaissance palace. Sasso Corvaro’s closest rival is the unfinished Rocca at Mondavio, begin in 1482 for Giovanni della Rovere, who sought to consolidate the signoria of nearby Senigallia, which he had received from his uncle Pope Sixtus IV in 1474. Here brick was used by Francesco di Giorgio to brilliant effect. The carefully battered walls, intended to resist artillery, seem to have been cut from butter. How revolutionary the design was is suggested by comparison with the well-preserved walls of nearby Corinaldo, begun in 1366, which had to be reinforced in 1484–90.
Rocca by Francesco di Giorgio, begun 1482.
For all its originality Mondavio seems almost puny by comparison with Giovanni della Rovere’s massive quadrangular fortress at Senigallia. Begun by Luciano Laurana and completed by Baccio Pontelli, this incorporated part of the structure of the town wall of the Roman port and is an emphatic statement of dynastic power and ambition.