Montelabbate

The castle was built, around the eleventh century, by the abbots of the nearby Benedictine monastery of San Tommaso in Foglia, to defend themselves from the raids of the men of Urbino and of Pesaro, who were at war with each other: hence the name, the abbot's mount. The monastery itself had been raised a century earlier on the ruins of a pagan temple, and its greatest moment was 1047, when the German pope Clement II stayed there and ended his days in it. The gifts that came from him and from the other powerful men who frequented it made it rich, until the politics of the fifteenth century brought it down: it was suppressed in 1447.

With the monastery gone, the castle passed to the Malatesta, who added a rocca to it; then to Costanzo Sforza, who liked the place, joined the abbots' residence and the fortress into a single building, and probably had the eastern tower built, which is the best thing left of the old stronghold. In November 1443, during the battle of Monteluro, three armies camped here one after another: that of Francesco Sforza, that of Niccolò Piccinino and that of Sigismondo Malatesta. Down below, the market of Montelabbate was among the most important of the Pesaro country, so much so that at the beginning of the fourteen hundreds it was decided to build a bridge over the river to serve it; and the lower part of the village is still called Borgo Mercato. In the little garden behind the old town hall there is a large Roman jar, dug out of the promontory of Gabicce and brought here by the counts who then held the castle.