Città di Castello

Città di Castello is the capital of the Alta Valtiberina — the upper Tiber valley, where the river that runs through Rome 250 km south is still a Tuscany-style stream — and the largest town in Umbria north of Perugia (38,222 residents, 56 km north of the regional capital, accessible by the historic Trenino Centrale Umbra line). The town's history rests on three layers. Roman: founded as Tifernum Tiberinum in the 1st c BC, Pliny the Younger had a villa here and described the upper Tiber landscape in his letters.

Medieval-Renaissance: walled town, with the Vitelli family running it as a Renaissance signoria from the 15th c, commissioning Raphael's first independent works (Sant'Andrea Avellino and the lost Pala di San Nicola da Tolentino were painted here in 1500-04 when Raphael was 17-21) before he moved to Rome. The Pinacoteca Comunale in the Palazzo Vitelli has the surviving Raphael altarpiece + works by Signorelli, Ghirlandaio, Della Robbia. 20th-century art: this is where Alberto Burri (1915-95), one of the most influential post-WWII Italian artists, was born and where the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri now operates two major sites — the Palazzo Albizzini in the centro (200+ works from the 1948-89 period) and the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco (former tobacco-drying warehouses, now painted black inside and out by Burri himself, holding the monumental late series including the entire Grande Cretti cycle).

The two together make this the world's most complete single-artist museum after Picasso's. Beyond art: Città di Castello holds three Città quality marks — Città del Tartufo (the Alta Valtiberina white truffle zone produces some of the best Tuber magnatum in Italy; the Mostra del Tartufo Bianco runs every weekend of November), Città della Ceramica (the local maiolica tradition since the 16th c, still active in a dozen workshops), and a stop on the Cammino di San Francesco (the pilgrim route from La Verna in Tuscany to Assisi). Plus the Mostra Nazionale del Cavallo (horse fair, early September), the Tibernum Festival of Renaissance music (July), and the medieval centro storico walls partially intact. The food is upper-Tiber Umbrian: ciaramicola (the local Easter cake), strangozzi with truffle, the famous Vitellone Bianco dell'Appennino Centrale IGP beef, pecorino, the local Sangiovese-based Colli Altotiberini DOC red.