The fortress of Mondavio was built between 1482 and 1492 by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, commissioned by Giovanni della Rovere, and it is in excellent condition for a simple reason: in all these centuries it has never undergone a siege, and not a single shot has ever left its cannons. The eight-sided keep dominates the fortress and connects to a covered way, protected by a small tower, which leads to a massive semicircular tower joined by a bridge to the entrance ravelin; the original design called for another round tower to the west, which was never built. The inner rooms nearly all keep their original plan and today house exhibition spaces and an armoury. On the village's origins the old sources let themselves go: Sebastiano Macci of Urbania speaks of a Roman settlement destroyed by Alaric's troops, while Pietro Maria Amiani of Fano reports the tale that the village was built by Saint Francis of Assisi, who, living in the area, was so struck by the healthiness of the place that he undertook to build a settlement there using the rubble of ancient Suasa. The name, at any rate, appears for the first time in a document of 1178.
Mondavio was the seat of a vicariate with jurisdiction over twenty-four castles, and it changed hands a good many times. In 1442 Sigismondo Malatesta crossed its walls in triumph: the vicariate had come to him as the dowry of his wife Polissena Sforza, and her father Francesco had taken it from the Church in a time of grave disorder. Then it returned to the pope, who in 1463 gave it in fief to his nephew Antonio Piccolomini; but Pius II died the following year and Mondavio, with Senigallia, San Costanzo and Mondolfo, rebelled against Piccolomini and submitted to the governor of Fano. With Sixtus IV the age of the Della Rovere began: Federico da Montefeltro agreed to marry into the family, giving his daughter Giovanna to the pope's nephew, Giovanni Della Rovere, who a few days after the wedding was invested with Senigallia and the vicariate of Mondavio, and who wanted the fortress here. Under the Della Rovere the vicariate lived about a hundred and thirty years of peace and of festivals, until 1631, when the dynasty died out and everything went back to the Holy See. In the town hall, in the council chamber, there is a Madonna and Child by Carlo da Camerino; and the Apollo theatre was carved at the end of the seventeen hundreds out of a fifteenth-century church, then enlarged in 1887 by architects whose names are not known.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Mondavio celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel; the village is dominated by the Rocca roveresca fortress, host to a mid-August Renaissance re-enactment.
Sheep's and cow's milk, aged twenty to thirty days: casciotta d'Urbino, Michelangelo's favourite cheese, has been DOP since 1996.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Mondavio, but an easy day trip away.
