The Municipal Picture Gallery was housed in its present location when in 1912 Elia Volpi, internationally renowned painter, restorer and antiquarian, donated the sixteenth century Palazzo Vitelli to the Town Hall. Built at different times, the building took on its definitive appearance in the first half of the sixteenth century and was so named because of its proximity to a foundry or cannon depot. The Palace, a noble example of a Renaissance residence, was built on the occasion of the wedding of Alessandro Vitelli and Angela Paola dei Rossi di San Secondo Parmense. Richly frescoed, it is characterised by the graffito decoration of the facade overlooking the garden by Cristofano Gherardi, known as il Doceno, designed by Vasari. Vases, masks, plant motifs, cherubs, cornucopias and birds flank the coats of arms and symbols of the noble Tifernate family. The staircase that gives access to the main floor is splendidly frescoed with a complex celebrative and symbolic decoration: Sybils and Prophets, Apollo and the Muses, Wise men and Emperors of antiquity who are attributed to Cola dell’Amatrice and Gherardi. The collection of works preserved here is, for importance, second in Umbria only to the National Gallery of Perugia. The large altarpiece with the “Madonna enthroned” with Child and six angels by the Master of Città di Castello, faithful follower of Duccio di Boninsegna, is the oldest painting preserved here. It is followed by works by Spinello Aretino, Giorgio di Andrea di Bartolo, Antonio Alberti da Ferrara, Neri di Bicci and Antonio Vivarini. The only example of goldsmith’s art is the “Reliquary of the arm of Saint Andrew”, dated 1420, attributed to the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti.

https://www.cittadicastelloturismo.it/percorso/pinacoteca-comunale/.

The Palazzo Albizzini “Burri Collection” Foundation was founded in 1978 by Alberto himself

Burri, with a first donation, endowed it with thirty-two works. It was recognised by decree of the President of the Regional Council of Umbria and took the name of the building that hosts it.

The Collection at Palazzo Albizzini was opened to the public in December 1981 and includes about one hundred and thirty works from 1948 to 1989, arranged chronologically in twenty rooms. Together with the other exhibition venue of the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco inaugurated in July 1990, which houses 128 works from 1970 to 1993, it is the most exhaustive collection on the artist, with works of the highest quality selected by the painter himself. At the Foundation there are: the library, rich in material relating to modern and contemporary art (which can be consulted upon prior written request by students and scholars), the photo library, which collects all the documentation concerning Alberto Burri’s work, and the archive, which contains an exhaustive bibliography on the artist. The Foundation periodically organises conferences on ancient, modern and contemporary art, updating conferences on contemporary art in collaboration with authoritative parallel national and international institutions, collaborates directly and indirectly in the publication of exhibition catalogues of the artist’s works, and is responsible for the publication of the Collection’s catalogues and brochures. He edited the volume “Burri – Contributions to the Systematic Catalogue” (1990).

http://www.fondazioneburri.org/

Aboca Museum is the only and original Museum of Herbs that recovers and hands down the history of the millenary relationship between man and plants.

Through the Erbe e Salute nei Secoli (Herbs and Health in the Centuries) route, visitors will be amazed by the prestigious Renaissance seat of Palazzo Bourbon del Monte, in via Niccolò Aggiunti.

In the exhibition rooms you will be able to admire the suggestive and faithful reconstructions of ancient laboratories, precious herbariums, books on pharmaceutical botany, ancient mortars, ceramics and glassworks.

http://www.abocamuseum.it/it/

also called Fortress of Sansepolcro

From Sangallo to Sansepolcro.

Going south along via Niccolò Aggiunti, right on the final part we will meet the Medici fortress of Giuliano Giamberti da Sangallo (1445-1516), dating back to the beginning of 1500. The first fortress was built by the Malatesta family, between the 14th and 15th centuries, on a previous fortified structure.

With its irregular quadrilateral shape, the fortress is an excellent example of “modern” military architecture, that is to say, it presents both new and retrofitting architectural solutions, derived from the need of military architecture to adapt to the new and more powerful firearms, used both for defence and attack.

Looking at the fortress from the side of Via dei Molini, the seam between the previous fifteenth century wall, so called “piombante” for defence and the next sixteenth century wall with a masonry mainly made of stone and bricks, is still visible.

The pre-existing central formwork was cut to make it less exposed to artillery fire.

A deep moat could be flooded if necessary, exploiting the water that fed the mills (hence the name of the nearby road).

The perimeter has four struts of different sizes at the corners: that of San Casciano to the north-east, that of San Leo to the north-west, that of Santa Maria to the south-west, that of Belvedere to the south-east.

The bastion of Santa Maria, facing the city, is the smallest of the four, but certainly the most singular and important, since it was not much altered and it has the structure given to it by Sangallo in the shape of a heart; the muzzle mouths of the cannons placed in the strut’s mast are clearly visible, invented by Giuliano to make them more hidden and allow for grazing defence.

The bastion of San Leo, on the other hand, underwent important and accurate studies which highlighted how Sangallo had designed it in a cylindrical manner, referring to other structures built in Tuscany and which was later, so to speak, “encased” by the local architect Alberto Alberti, who was responsible for improving the fortress in 1561.

The bastion of San Casciano, also remodeled, still has the shape of a St. Gallic heart.

The bastion of Belvedere is the largest of the four, built entirely in bricks and probably from a later period; it was much strengthened compared to the others, because it was directly exposed to attacks from the plain and also in this case the original of Sangallo was incorporated by the more modern structure.

Inside the fortress there is a very suggestive medieval courtyard to crown the thirteenth-century structure close to the strut of San Casciano.

Moreover, in the middle of the 16th century, Alberti made further important changes to the work carried out by Sangallo, in particular with the construction of the rivellino, a polygonal defensive structure located near the San Casciano rafter, surrounded by very high retaining walls near the ditch which formed an embankment descending towards the outside, still partly visible today.

From the eighteenth century onwards the defensive requirements were less and less and the structure was sold and transformed in the nineteenth century into an agricultural farm, and today it is privately owned.

http://www.museionline.info/tipologie-museo/fortezza-di-sansepolcro

The origins of the building that houses the Civic Museum of Sansepolcro are fourteenth-century.

The rebuilding, above a previous building, was carried out at the behest of Galeotto Malatesta, around the early 1300s.

Evidence of these historical origins are the underground rooms, once stables of the palace and which today house the treasure of the cathedral with the apparatus of Roberto Maria Costaguti (1732-1818) bishop of Sansepolcro from 1778 to 1818. The present building underwent various modifications over the centuries, not all of which are easily identifiable. In the fifteenth-century reconfiguration, when the Palazzo della Residenza was completely reorganised, the Sala dei Conservatori del Popolo, which boasts on the back wall the famous Resurrezione di Cristo (Resurrection of Christ), created around 1460 by the Tuscan master Piero della Francesca (c.1415 -1492), was redefined. Thanks to the location of the extraordinary work of the artist of Sansepolcro, the idea by the municipal administration of the time to collect a group of works of art, which gave life to the first nucleus of the Municipal Picture Gallery, was born at the end of the nineteenth century. In the following centuries, until the twentieth century, there were other interventions that led the Palace to assume its present appearance.

The Civic Museum houses a considerable artistic heritage, with an impressive collection of works ranging from the 14th to the 20th century: the altarpiece of Saints Peter and Paul by Matteo di Giovanni (1430?-1495), the altarpiece with the Annunciation, Adoration of the Shepherds, Angels and Saints by Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525?), the Madonna del Soccorso by Gerino da Pistoia (1480-1529? ), the Martyrdom of San Quintino by Jacopo Carucci known as Pontormo (1494-1557), the Annunciation of Saints by Tito (1536-1603), the Adoration of the Magi by Leandro da Ponte known as Bassano (1557-1622), the Crucifixion and Saints (from the workshop) by Domenico Cresti known as Passignano (1559-1638), finally Giovan Battista Mercati (1591-1645) with the Immaculate Conception and Saints and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin by Raffaellino del Colle (1594? -1566).  An unfailing glance is reserved for the 14th century frescoes (currently under study) from various churches in the town and located on the top floor of the Museum and the small archaeological collection of local finds. Certainly the most interesting part is that dedicated to Piero della Francesca, born and raised in Sansepolcro. The Sala dei Conservatori also offers two other extraordinarily interesting fresco fragments by Piero della Francesca: the San Giuliano (c. 1455) and the San Ludovico (1460). Without forgetting, in the room next to the latter, the equally famous Polyptych of Mercy (1445-1454) also by Piero della Francesca.

http://www.museocivicosansepolcro.it/

Historical and scientific museum of tobacco San Giustino Umbro – Perugia

Via Toscana, 06016 San Giustino Umbro PG

In the area that first saw the cultivation of tobacco, the museum is located in the headquarters of the former tobacco growers’ consortium in the centre of San Giustino. Inside the museum it is possible to see ancient machinery related to the production of tobacco and photographic documents of great historical value.

www.museotabacco.org

Located right in the centre of the village of San Giustino, the complex of Palazzo Bufalini (XV- XVI century) looks like an elegant residence surrounded by greenery within the walls.

The quadrangular fortress with four towers has the characteristics of military architecture in which medieval elements coexist with more modern Renaissance buildings. From 1487, the castle became the property of the Bufalini family who enriched it with works of art, including remarkable frescoes with mythological subjects by Cristofano Gherardi known as Doceno, dating back to the second half of the 16th century.

http://polomusealeumbria.beniculturali.it/?page_id=3682

A splendid example of a late Renaissance noble villa, Palazzo Magherini Graziani stands halfway up the hill in an open panoramic position overlooking the Tiber Valley. The villa was built by Carlo Graziani, an exponent of the typhernate family of Tuscan origin, at the beginning of the eighteenth century by commissioning the architect Antonio Cantagallina. The villa is municipal property. The farmhouse is home both to a guesthouse with rooms that host socio-cultural activities, and the operational headquarters for the excavation campaigns of the Villa of Plinio Il Giovane of the Archaeological Superintendence of Umbria, the Universities of Perugia and Alicante (Spain). There is in fact an archaeological museum of the above mentioned villa systematically investigated since 1986.

http://fondazionevillafabri.org

sindaco@comune.sangiustino.pg.it