Fossombrone,[10] fifteen miles distant from Fano, and belonging to the Duke of Urbino, stands at the entrance to the mountains, which close up towards each other at the end of the flat country. The town stands close to the mountain slopes, and in its lower parts possesses one or two fine straight streets, uniform and well built. Nevertheless, report says, the people are much poorer than those of Fano. In the public place is a large marble pedestal with a long inscription of the age of Trajan, written in honour of a certain inhabitant of the place;[11] and set against the wall is another without any sign to proclaim its date. This place was formerly called Forum Sempronii, and the people now maintain that the original town stood farther towards the plain, and that ruins of the same are still to be found on a vastly better site. Here is a stone bridge which carries the Via Flaminia over the Metaurus. Seeing that I arrived in good time—for the miles are short ones, and we are seldom in the saddle more than seven or eight hours—I had plenty of time to talk with the good folk of the place, and to glean from them information concerning their town and its surroundings. We visited a garden belonging to the cardinal of Urbino,[12] in which were many vines grafted upon other stocks, and I had some talk with one Vincentius Castellani, a worthy man of letters and a citizen of the place.

On the following morning I departed, and at the third milestone I turned to the left; and, having crossed the bridge over the Cardiana,[13] a stream which joins the Metaurus, I went three miles through the mountains, over a narrow and difficult road, at the end of which we came upon a passage, fifty good paces in length, which had been fashioned through a high rock.[14] On account of the magnitude of the work, Augustus, who had first set his hand thereto, caused an inscription to be put up in his name. This, however, has perished by time; but another inscription in honour of Vespasian is still to be seen at the other end of the pass. Everywhere round about are remains of vast constructions of great height for the conveyance of water, and below the road rocks of enormous thickness have been cut through or levelled. All along this road, the Via Flaminia, which leads to Rome, are traces of the great stones used for paving, but most of these are buried; and the road, which was originally forty feet wide, is now not more than four. I went out of my way to visit this spot, and then retraced my steps to get once more on my road, which took me at the foot of a range of fertile, gently sloping hills. Towards the end of our journey the road ran now up and now down hill, and at the end of sixteen miles we found ourselves at Urbino.

URBINO
Reproduced from Civitates Orbis Terrarum

To face p. 12, vol. iii.

I could discover no remarkable merit in this place. It is set on the top of a mountain of moderate height, but the town straggles all over the acclivities of the site so that there is scarcely a level foot, and it is up hill or down hill wherever you go. It was Saturday and a market day. We saw the palace,[15] which is renowned for its beauty, a huge mass, the foundations of which rest upon the very foot of the hill. The view extends over a thousand other of the adjacent mountains, but is not especially beautiful. To make up for the want of amenity in the palace without and within—there is only one little garden about twenty-five paces wide—they declare that it contains as many chambers as there are days in the year. This may well be true, for the number of rooms is very great, as at Tivoli and other Italian palaces. Looking through one doorway you may often see twenty other doors in succession on one side, and twenty or more on the other. Some portions of the palace are ancient, but the greater part of it was built in 1476 by Federigo Maria della Rovere, who has set forth therein the style and dignity of his various offices and his exploits in war.[16] The palace walls are covered in many places with inscriptions of this sort, and one of them declares that this is the fairest dwelling in the world. It is built of brick and vaulted throughout, with none of the wooden ceilings so common in Italy.

The present duke is grand-nephew of the builder of the palace:[17] the princes of this family having all been good rulers, and beloved by their subjects. The love of letters has come down from father to son, and the library of the palace is a fine one, but the key of it was not to be found. The duke is all in the Spanish interests, and the arms of Spain appear everywhere in favoured positions: the order of England[18] and the Golden Fleece are also displayed, but none of ours. They showed to us a portrait of the first Duke of Urbino, a young man who was slain by his subjects for his unjust dealing,[19] but he was not of this family. The present duke has to wife the sister of the Duke of Ferrara,[20] who is ten years his senior, but they are on bad terms and live apart, for no other reason, according to rumour, than the jealousy of the duchess. Thus, besides the disparity of age—she being forty-five years of age—there is little hope of children, and if heirs fail the duchy will revert to the Church, an event which would be very distasteful to the people.

I saw there the life-size portrait of Picus Mirandula:[21] the face pale, very handsome, and beardless, of a youth of seventeen or eighteen, with a long nose, soft eyes, scant of flesh, and with blonde hair, which came down over the shoulders. The costume he wore was a strange one. In many places in Italy they are wont to build the staircases very level, with shallow steps, so that a man on horseback can easily reach the top. Here the stairs are thus built, and laid with tiles set on edge. The place is by report very cold, and the duke as a rule lives here only during the summer; this statement being confirmed by the fact that in two of the ducal chambers are to be seen other apartments contrived in a corner, and closed on all sides save by one window, which lets in light from the chamber aforesaid. In these apartments the state beds are arranged.

After dinner I again turned aside from my road and went about five miles to visit a spot which has been known in all ages as the Tomb of Hasdrubal. It stands on a high abrupt hill called Monte Deci,[22] where are four or five mean cottages and a little church, and a building of thick bricks or tiles, about twenty-five paces in circumference and the same height in feet, and surrounded by seats fashioned of the same bricks and set at intervals of three feet. I cannot say what name masons give to these constructions, something like flying buttresses, which they use as supports. We entered the place from above, there being no door below, and found within a vaulted chamber and nought else—no hewn stone, no inscriptions; but the people of the place affirmed that it formerly contained a marble tablet bearing certain marks, which tablet had been removed not long ago. How the tower got the name it bears I cannot say, and I hardly believe it can be what it claims to be, but it is certain that Hasdrubal was defeated and slain close to the spot. The road became very hilly and deep with mud for an hour after a shower of rain which fell. We crossed the Metaurus by a ford, the stream being here a torrent and too shallow to carry a boat, indeed we had crossed it once before since dining, and found a good road to Castel Durante, fifteen miles from Urbino.

This small town, belonging to the Duke of Urbino, is built on level ground along the Metaurus. The people were firing guns and making merry over the birth of a son to the Princess of Bisignano, the duke’s sister.[23] Our vetturini here unsaddled the horses and unbridled them as well, and then, without any discrimination, let them drink what water they would. Both here and at Urbino the wine was adulterated.