Urbino
May 7th, 2008Driving through the incredibly luscious green hills of the Marche area, you can be forgiven for feeling like you are perhaps in Ireland. The green of hills etches itself in your mind, returning with every memory of your time in the region.
Continuing north-west from Ancona, the main city of the Marche region, winding dirt roads hug hills that lazily rise out of the landscape, before dropping off into the sea-side cliffs. One turn of the road has you staring into a scene that looks like Tuscany with the colours turned up, the next, you are looking out over the blue green of the ocean.
As the sun shines in through the car windows, you wind the window down to feel the cool sea breeze lick your fingers as you wave to the hills you pass through. The roads are all lined with intensely yellow flowers that bloom throughout the region. As the car stops at an intersection, you can reach out and pick some flowers leaning out from the embankment. These flowers however, are all beauty and no scent, so you release them into the breeze as you continue your journey through the countryside.
Houses rest in fields in various states from romantic decay lively habitation, surrounded by untouched fields and carefully kept farmlands, some perused by slow-moving animals. You glimpse a playful puppy jumping hopefully at a ball launched to the sun by a farmer taking a break from his work, whilst on the other side of the yard, his wife, in a floral printed dress, unfurls wet linen with a matadorian flick, before pegging it, tamed, onto a clothes line.
Your destination is Urbino. Located just on the ‘calf’ of Italy, still in the Marche area, it is a small hill-town that has successfully been preserved throughout the centuries, so much so that the entire city has been World Heritage listed.
Entering into the city, you park at the base of an incline. Stopping for a coffee in a bar, you are tempted by the look of the Italian ‘biscotti’ on display. Asking for just one cookie per person, the cheerful cafe owner presents you instead with a plate abounding, each looking more delicious than the next. And of course, the only way to determine which is indeed the more delicious, is by sampling each and every one!
Having been re-energised by the cafe pit-stop, you continue on, walking up and up the winding road, until you are stopped by the stunning sight of the palace which is guarded over by a stone hawk, the symbol of the Noble family who once resided here. Architecturally designed so that seemingly innocent stairways and pathways functioned as a form of moat, allowing defence by means of pouring boiling oil to be launched down steps into oncoming enemies, paths were narrowed to prevent armies from approaching en mass.
Dwarfed by the imposing angled face of this building and miniatured by the expanse of its history, you continue on in your exploration of the town.
You pass a game parlor packed with dozens of teenagers, laughing and whispering about each other other behind hands that leave revealed the playful look in their eyes. The contrast of the serious history and the playful modernity just intensifies your like of Urbino.
Further along, the street shatters into several directions. One leads up to a gently sloped street lined with food stores, coffee bars, restaurants and various other shops. From here, you glimpse a rectangular piazza set sunken into the ground and shadowed by a large building that makes this area seem like a wondrous geometry project.
The town is spacious, its streets wide and buildings large and masculine, but still beautiful and somehow gentle. The pace here is relaxed, and smiles adorn each face that you pass on the stroll up and down the streets.
Turning to the right, you see stairs that lead up to a large open space of the Piazza Duca Federico, embraced on one side by the arm of the Palazzo Ducale, and on the other, the 19th century neo-classical and understated Duomo (Cathedral).
Entering into the Palazzo, this is now the home of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Museo della Ceramica and the Museo Archeologico. With the sun slowly starting its decent in the sky, you eeny-meeny-miney-moe and head into the Galleria Nazionale. Firstly, you enter into the museum to marvel at the artworks you have previously only seen in school textbooks. This building, completed in 1482, is constructed around a rectangular courtyard. Leading from here is a staircase winding up to the Ducal Apartments where you find the Duca Federico Studiolo. Housing paintings by Piero della Francesca, you are awed by the history, by the art, by the whispers of the past that whip at your heels as you pass through room after spectacular room.
Some rooms could host football matches, whilst others are small and cramped, such as the wood-panelled study etched with images of great scholars. Then there is the eerily lit prayer room, its low ceiling painted with hundreds of tiny cherub faces that watch the over the repentant and the grateful who enter.
As you file through room after room, you wonder how many times ones’ breath can be taken away and still be given back again.
Exiting via the monumental staircase, again into the central courtyard, you glimpse other entryways beckoning your entrance. Behind large royal blue velvet drapes, you are in search of the famed library. Instead you find a strange set up where the books once were. Here, now, you find projectors that are set up as computer-simulated books, of which one can turn the pages with a flamboyant flick of a hand in front of a sensor. This is surreal. Watching adults and children alike gesturing in a mode more outrageous than the next in attempts to stimulate the sensor, you cannot help but laugh at the ridiculous and fabulous here.
Exiting the room and entering into the next door along, you find the real deal, rending the previous simulated library even more bizarre. Here you can see illuminated manuscripts carefully preserved in humidified cases. The brilliance of the colours, the finest details of each hand-painted image on each page, and the years that must have been spent by hunched monks and priests to create these amazing books is almost beyond understanding in the age of laser printing.
From back in the Piazza Duca Federico, you enter into a subterranean area of the palazzo that is almost deserted. You here music working its way slowly to a crescendo, and following the sound, you enter into a large room where images of the Renaissance era are projected onto the wall. They flash and gyrate to the music. There are people sitting around the edges of the room enjoying the ambiance, but you grab your friend and slow-dance to the music, tripping over your feet and your own laughter.
Next you wander through a maze of doorways that lead into stone walled, empty rooms that connect and wind and disorientate.
Exiting from the underground, you traverse the Piazza Duca Federico, and enter into the Duomo. By now, the night has blanketed the city and as you enter into the Duomo, there are not too many people here. You absorb the high ceilings, the incredible paintings, the glow of the prayer candles, the aromatic scent of churches that seems to be the same around the world. You wander slowly around the edges of the church, admiring the incredible artwork, of which this country seems to have an infinite amount.
Calm and happy, you wander out of the church, into the dark of night. The streets are not quite deserted, but almost. Your footsteps drum a rhythmic echo into the night as you re-trace the winding street back to the car.
You find that the cafe is still open, its doorways now surrounded by several people merrily chatting, and you enter, seeing if there was, perhaps, just one or two more kinds of biscotti you have not tried here…
