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Città di Castello (Perugia province)

A town of northern Umbria: 43°28N, 12°14.6E. Altitude: 288 m. Population in 2003: 38,300.

The Palazzo del Podestà.

Città di Castello is a regional center, of decidedly urban aspect, on the upper reaches of the Tiber, 20 km N of Umbertide and 17 km SE of Sansepolcro in Tuscany. On the economic front, it produces farm machinery, textiles, ceramics and furnishings, mostly in a large, ugly, sprawling industrial area N of town.

Historically, the city was already old when the Romans took it over in the 3c B.C.; and it is often mentioned in connection with Pliny the Younger, a local benefactor whose villa may have been found in the neighboring comune of S. Giustino (q.v.).

The town has several large medieval churches, much reworked in the Renaissance and later periods. Its civil architecture is more characteristic of the Middle Ages, especially the striking Palazzo Comunale and the tall thin city tower, the Torre Comunale.

The Pinacoteca Comunale houses a largish collection of paintings, mostly of the Renaissance. Raphael worked here for a time but his paintings are now elsewhere. The museum to see, however, is the Museo del Duomo, the cathedral museum: it has some very good medieval reliquaries, but is known the world over for the 5c‑6c Tesoro di Canoscio, a set of silver tableware with Christian motifs.

A proper website will eventually appear here, since I've visited Città di Castello several times, fairly thoroughly for your average foreign tourist. For now, another general overview provided by the brief article in the (1911) Encyclopedia Britannica, but also a couple of pages of my own on some of the town's Roman inscriptions.

[ 1/23/07: 15 churches, 6 pages, 39 photos ]

More systematically, the comune's churches: an initial sampler consisting in part of bare photographs, but also a fairly complete site on the two interesting churches of Canoscio.

You might also find it useful to read the following entries of my diary: Mar. 8, 2004 • May 25, 2004 • Oct. 13, 1997. Finally, in addition to the links below, those of you interested in spas will find information here on the Terme di Fontecchio.

Frazioni

Like most of the comuni in Italy, Città di Castello includes in its territory some smaller towns and hamlets, usually of a few hundred inhabitants if that, with a certain administrative identity of their own: as elsewhere in Italy, these are referred to as the frazioni of the comune (singular: frazione, literally a "fraction"): a complete list of them follows. Links are usually to pages of my own, since I've walked some of the area.

Badia di Petroia • Belvedere • Bocca Seriola • Caifirenze • Candeggio • Canoscio • Cerbara • Fabbrecce • Fraccano • Lerchi • Lugnano • Morra • Muccignano • Petrelle • Piosina • Promano • Riosecco • Ronti Morra • S. Donnino • S. Leo Bastia • S. Lucia • S. Maiano • S. Pietro a Monte • Sansecondo • Scalocchio • Terme di Fontecchio • Trestina • Uppiano • Vallurbana

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