Urbino is small enough to walk in a morning and rich enough to occupy a week. The Palazzo Ducale and its Galleria Nazionale are the unavoidable highlight, but the city's pleasure is its texture: brick lanes, sudden views over the green hills, students lounging on the steps of the Renaissance loggia. Don't skip the small oratories of San Giovanni Battista and San Giuseppe, which between them hold some of the most extraordinary 15th-century frescoes in Italy. Raphael's birthplace is a short climb up Via Raffaello.