the Kentucky tobacco that goes into Toscano cigars,
which was introduced to Europe long after della
Francesca’s death on 12 October 1492, the same
day that Columbus reached the New World. There’s
a tobacco museum at San Giustino, the hub of the
industry near Città di Castello, and in the town itself
the former tobacco drying rooms have been converted
into a gallery showing the works of contemporary
local artist Alberto Burri – though if you admire della
Francesca’s pure forms, you’re perhaps unlikely to be a
fan of Burri’s burnt plastic bags and ripped jute sacks.
The tobacco industry spilled over into local
oenology when, in the late 19th century, producers
of vin santo – holy wine, so called as it was once used
at Communion – began drying their grapes with
tobacco leaves over large wood-fired stoves. The result
is the unique vin santo affumicato, a dessert wine with
distinct notes of cigar smoke.
Travelling north-east from Città di Castello, cherry
blossom gives way to fir trees and patches of snow
are still visible on the highest peaks as the road rears
steeply from the plain and loops across the Apennines
to Urbino. The town’s Ducal Palace appears in the
distance like a fairytale castle of fantastic size and
charm, the “most beautiful in all Italy” according to
Baldassare Castiglione, author of the 16th-century
manual of etiquette The Book of the Courtier.
Della Francesca worked at the court, then
regarded as the height of civilisation, of Federico
da Montefeltro: warrior, patron of the arts andRenaissance man par excellence. Della Francesca’s
famous portraits of Federico and his wife Battista
Sforza with the rolling Urbino hills in the background
are now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, but another
two works from the period are shown in Urbino’s
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche: the enigmatic
Flagellation of Christ, in which three figures in
contemporary dress carry on a conversation even
as Christ is being flayed in the background, and
the Madonna di Senigallia, an image of imperturbable
tranquillity. There’s also a painting, once attributed
to della Francesca, called The Ideal City, which is
what Urbino was considered to be.
Although it’s a small and secluded town, Urbino
has a university of its own, and amid all its history
(including Raphael’s house) the students give it
a lively, cosmopolitan atmosphere.
I wrote my degree thesis about an Urbino-born
novelist, Paolo Volponi, and used to come here
often. I strike up a conversation about the changes
I’ve noticed in the town with a woman at a café
on the castle walls high above the Borgo Mercatale,
once the market square but now a giant car park.
“When I was a child,” she says matter-of-factly,
“I used to come into town with my dad to sell
our sheep and goats down there.”
Outside the Ducal Palace, I chat with caretaker
Denis Morganti, though not about art. I’m curious
about his accent, which sounds as if it’s from
Romagna, further north on the Adriatic. But no,
he says he’s from near Città di Castello in Umbria.
“Here we have a fusion of accents, like we have a
fusion of foods.” By way of example, he describes
the local flatbreads. “There’s the torta al testo of
Città di Castello, a disc of unleavened dough cooked
on a testo, a griddle pan,” says Morganti, warming to
the subject. “It’s similar to the piadina of Romagna,
though some people add egg to the dough. Elsewhere
in Umbria they call it crescia, not to be confused with
the ciaccia of Sansepolcro, which is fried bread dough.
Then there’s the crostolo del Montefeltro, more like
puff pastry. Here in Urbino it’s called crescia sfogliata.”
Italians eat in dialect.
My head spinning, I return to the café for a crescia
sfogliata filled with Casciotta d’Urbino, a sheep’s
cheese that was such a favourite of Michelangelo’s
that he used to have it delivered to him in Rome.
Passing through Romagna on my way home, I stop
off at the cathedral in Rimini on the Adriatic coast to
see the portrait della Francesca painted of another of
his patrons, the local “signore” Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta. But I end up at a kiosk on the promenade
eating a piadina filled with squacquerone, the local
creamy cow’s milk cheese. The Piero della Francesca
trail is turning into a flatbread trail – from the sublime
to the delicious. ●Above: the
courtyard and
interior of the
Ducal Palace in
Urbino; crescia
sfogliata in
Urbino. Opposite:
Ducal Palace,
Urbino.128 GOURMET TRAVELLER