It stands next to the Ducal Palace, and for that reason it is hard to look at: people who come to Urbino come for Federico da Montefeltro and for Raphael, and cross the cathedral distractedly. Yet it was Federico himself who wanted it rebuilt, in the fourteen-eighties, to a design attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini, his architect: a sober basilica with three naves on white piers, without decoration, as he liked it. Almost nothing of that church remains: the earthquake of 1781 ruined the façade, the one of 1789 brought down the dome, and the rebuilding was entrusted to Camillo Morigia and to Giuseppe Valadier, the greatest neoclassical architect in Rome, who finished it in 1801.
What to see
The façade of Furlo stone with its five statues, the three theological Virtues on the pediment and Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom on the slopes; on the frieze, the inscription thanking the University of Urbino for having paid for the roof, a rare thing to read on a cathedral. The staircase with its balustrade, of 1859, with Saint Crescentinus the patron on the left and Blessed Mainardo on the right: it is where the students sit in the sun.
Inside, Valadier: three white naves with barrel vaults, the coffered dome over the crossing, the stuccoes and angels by Antonio Trentanove and Francesco Antonio Rondelli, and a cold, orderly light that is the opposite of Baroque. In the chapels, Claudio Ridolfi's Translation of the Holy House and seventeenth-century canvases; and below, in the Albani Museum in the sacristy, the pieces saved from the old church and the treasury. The church reopened in 2020 after four years of work to repair the damage from the 2016 earthquake: here earthquakes are a constant.
Visiting
The cathedral is on Piazza Duca Federico, beside the Ducal Palace and the National Gallery of the Marche; free entry with church hours and a lunch closure, the Albani Museum has its own ticket and hours. Half an hour, added to the two or three of the Ducal Palace. The best spot is the staircase at the end of the day, when the students come out.
Our editors' tip
Go in after the Ducal Palace, not before: after Federico's studiolo and Piero's Flagellation, a white and empty neoclassical church puts your head back in order, and you understand the duke's taste better by looking at what his architect meant to do here. Then read the inscription on the frieze: it is a university paying for the cathedral roof, and it is the most Urbino thing there is.