Urbino · Go deeper
Where to live
Urbino is a small walled Renaissance town on a hill, so the choice here is simple and complete: live inside the walls, in the perfect historic centre, or in the newer districts and the Montefeltro countryside beyond them. For so small a place, the two options sit surprisingly far apart.
Inside the walls
Centro Storico
most sought-afterThe walled Renaissance jewel: a compact, steep climb of honey-brick streets rising to the great Palazzo Ducale and the university, one of the most perfectly preserved historic centres in Italy and a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's beautiful, alive with students, and the most sought-after place to live, with real daily life among the Renaissance stone. The trade is the hills, the small old apartments, the car limits, and that it quietens noticeably out of term.
Best for: those who want to live inside the Renaissance ideal, on foot and among the students
Learn more about the historic heart
For a few decades in the 1400s, this small hill town was one of the most brilliant places in Europe. Under Duke Federico da Montefeltro, Urbino became a beacon of the Renaissance: a soldier-scholar’s court that gathered the finest artists, architects, and thinkers of the age. Federico built the Palazzo Ducale, a palace conceived as a ‘city in the form of a palace,’ with a small studiolo panelled in trompe-l’œil marquetry; and it was in these rooms that Baldassare Castiglione set The Book of the Courtier, the book that taught all of Europe how to be a gentleman.
And Urbino gave the world Raphael. Raffaello Sanzio was born here in 1483, a painter’s son, and grew up amid the harmony this court had made. You can still visit the modest house where he was born. The town founded its university in 1506, and it thrives still, filling the Renaissance streets with students five centuries on. A perfect palace, a perfect painter, and a living university: Urbino holds an astonishing amount of history in a very small, very beautiful space.
Outside the walls and the surroundings
The districts outside the walls
mid, practical valueThe newer residential areas just outside the historic walls, down the hillsides and along the approach roads: practical, with easier parking, everyday shops, and student housing, at gentler prices than inside. A short walk or bus up to the centre, and where a lot of everyday Urbino, students and residents alike, actually lives. You give up the walls, and you gain a parking space.
Best for: those wanting value, parking, and an easy reach into the walled centre
The Montefeltro countryside
rural, idyllic valueBeyond the town, the green Montefeltro hills roll out, the very landscape that glows in the backgrounds of Raphael's paintings, dotted with farmhouses, hamlets, and long views. Space, quiet, and low prices, in exchange for total car-dependence and distance from the centre. This is the rural Renaissance dream at real Marche prices. You'll need a car, and winters are quiet.
Best for: those wanting a rural home in the painterly hills, ready for the car-dependent life
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