The hurly-burly of twentieth century life has not yet reached Gubbio, and that is why it presents itself to the visitor within its walls in such agreeable fashion.
Off in the Marches, sixty-five kilometres from Gubbio, is the little town of Urbino. It has a Palazzo Ducale most remarkable in its architecture and its emplacement. It was begun in 1648 by Frederigo di Montefeltro, on the site of a former palace of a century before. The apartments within are not merely the halls of a museum, but are remarkably interesting and livable mediæval apartments, and to-day are much as they were in the days of the gallant dukes, one of whom, Guidobaldo II, was a poet himself and a patron of letters who gave his protection to the last Italian poet whose fame was European--Torquato Tasso.
Urbino, too, was the birthplace of him whom we know familiarly as Raphael, though curiously enough the local museum contains but a single example of his work, and that a drawing of "Moses in the Bulrushes."
Urbino's chief "sight," though it is not beautiful in itself, is the birthplace of Raphael, situated in a little street running off from near the ducal palace, a street which mounts heavenward so steeply that it was formerly called the Via del Monte. The authorities, in an effort to keep up with popular taste, have recently changed the name to Via Raffaello.
It is a mean, simple and grim looking little house, not at all beautiful according to palatial standards. On the 6th of April, 1483, its fame began, but pilgrims have only in recent years come to bow down before it. Nevertheless popes and prelates and princes came here to sit to the "painter of Urbino" and have left an added distinction to the house. Muzio Oddi, the celebrated architect and mathematician, caused to be graven the following on its façade:--
"Ludet in humanis divina potentia rebus Et saepe in parvis claudre magna solet."
A tablet marks the house plainly. It will not be possible to miss it.
Urbino sits high above the surrounding valley, twelve or fifteen hundred feet above sea level. A coach of doubtful antiquity formerly made the same journey as that covered by the railway and deposited its mixed freight of travellers and inhabitants in one of the most splendid of the Renaissance cities of Italy. Now, the automobile brings many more tourists than ever before came by coach, or railway even, and accordingly Urbino will undoubtedly become better known.