Raphael was born here in 1483, in a house on via del Monte in Urbino, and it was not a lord's house: it was that of a court painter, his father Giovanni Santi, who had his workshop on the ground floor. The child grew up among colours to be ground and panels to be prepared, and learned the trade before he knew he would become Raphael.
What to see
The rooms are furnished with period furniture and keep the look of the home of well-off craftsmen of the fifteenth century. In one you see the fireplace, in another the inner courtyard with the stone on which pigments were ground: these are the tools of a trade, not the relics of a genius.
On the wall of one room is a fresco of a Madonna nursing the child, and scholars have always argued whether it is the work of the father or of the very young son. In the other rooms are copies, prints and documents about the family and about the Urbino of those years, when the city was one of the most cultivated courts in Europe.
Visiting
The house is in via Raffaello, on the climb towards the fortress, five minutes from the Ducal Palace; paid ticket, weekly closing day and shorter hours in winter. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Go down into the courtyard and stop in front of the grinding stone: it is the most concrete object in the house. From there, looking out of the door, you see the steep street of a provincial town; two hundred metres away stood the duke's palace, with the best artists in Italy coming and going. In those two hundred metres lies the whole story.