Art and culture in Città di Castello

Città di Castello is a town of about 39 thousand inhabitants in the province of Perugia, located within the Val Tiberina, in the upper Tiber Valley in northern Umbria. Located in an area of the Apennines rich in villas, castles and parish churches and essentially baroque structural conception, given its position it is a crossroads of artistic and cultural ferments and movements. Of Umbrian origin, then occupied by the Romans, it was originally surrounded by defensive walls of which the most important part visible today is the Giardino del Cassero. From the old gate of the fortification, a modern system of escalators leads to the city center. The city provides an image of composure and austerity, typical of medieval times, complemented by the decor of ancient art that alternate with the multisensory sensations of contemporaneity. It is a sort of city-museum that combines elements of high artistic value attributable to all the historical periods that are chained in an uninterrupted sequence up to the present day. The center, whose architectural style of the residences is inspired by the Florentine taste, experienced its maximum splendor in the Renaissance with the lordship and patronage of the Vitelli family between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century. Famous architects, artists and painters were called to embellish the village. Among these, Raphael who at a very young age experimented and refined his expressive techniques within these walls. There are four Vitelli palaces in the town: Palazzo Vitelli alla Cannoniera, current seat of the municipal art gallery, Palazzo Vitelli in San Giacomo, future seat of the municipal library, Palazzo Vitelli in the square and Palazzo Vitelli in Sant'Egidio, the largest, last built in the second half of the 16th century, which constitutes a unicum from a structural and decorative point of view as artists from the Emilian and Parma area worked there. Adjacent to the cathedral, the Duomo Museum preserves important goldsmith works and sacred objects for the Eucharistic celebration that start from the early Christian period up to the nineteenth century.