Palazzo Ducale

Federico da Montefeltro's small Renaissance court palace

A small but unmistakably Renaissance palace squeezed into the medieval centre, opposite the Duomo. Federico da Montefeltro built it on the site of an older Lombard palace in the 1470s. The pretty inner courtyard, with its red brick and white travertine, is the highlight. The famous studiolo — a tiny private study covered in dazzling wooden marquetry of trompe-l'œil shelves — was sold to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1939; what you see in the original room is a reconstruction. Still worth visiting for the rest of the palace and the courtyard.

Combined ticket with the Civic Museum.

things to do sight
A story
Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, commissioned the palace around 1470 from the same circle of architects who built the much larger ducal palace in Urbino — probably Francesco di Giorgio Martini. He used Gubbio as a kind of country retreat.

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