History
Originally known as Castel delle Ripe, it was a free commune of the Guelph party. In 1277 it was destroyed by the Ghibellines, then rebuilt by the Provençal Guillaume Durand in 1284 and christened Casteldurante. Later it was ruled by the Brancaleoni family. When the latter were ousted, the city offered itself to the Dukes of Urbino, who used the palace in the city as summer residence and had it restored by architects such as Francesco di Giorgio Martini. The last della Rovere duke, Francesco Maria II, is buried in the Ducal Palace of Urbania.
In 1631 it became part of the Papal States. Five years later its name changed to the current one, in honor of Pope Urban VIII.
On January 23, 1944 Urbania was bombed by the Allies, resulting in the deaths of 250 civilians. It was a Sunday so the people had gathered in the town, increasing the number of victims.
After World War II Urbania received the Bronze Medal for Military Valour for the deeds of its citizens during the partisan warfare.
Read more about this topic: Urbania
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“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)