The Pinacoteca Comunale of Città di Castello is housed in Palazzo Vitelli alla Cannoniera, the Renaissance home of the condottiere Alessandro Vitelli and his wife Angela de' Rossi, which has come down to us almost intact in its structure. The palace was built between 1521 and 1532 and completed in 1545; the nickname comes from the cannon foundry or store that stood on the site. In 1907 it was bought by the antiquarian and restorer Elia Volpi, who saved it from ruin and in 1912 gave it to the town to house the picture gallery. With the National Gallery in Perugia it is one of the main art collections in Umbria.
What to see
The front facing the Italian garden is covered with sgraffito by Cristoforo Gherardi to a design by Giorgio Vasari, with grotesques and the emblems of the two families. The rooms were frescoed by Gherardi and Cola dell'Amatrice with the military deeds of the Vitelli, allegories and mythological landscapes; on the staircase are the Muses and the stories of Apollo from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The core of the collection comes from the town's churches and convents. It starts with the thirteenth-century gold-ground panels, including the Enthroned Madonna by the Master of Città di Castello, and reaches Raphael's banner of the Holy Trinity, dated by scholars to 1499-1501: it is the artist's only work left in the town. By Luca Signorelli, an honorary citizen from 1488, there are the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and the large Saint Cecilia altarpiece; then come a Coronation of the Virgin from Ghirlandaio's workshop, works by Raffaellino del Colle and Pomarancio, terracottas by Andrea della Robbia and the reliquary of Saint Andrew by Lorenzo Ghiberti and workshop. The twentieth-century section has works by de Chirico, Guttuso, Carrà and Mafai.
Visiting
The museum owes its present form to the restoration carried out between 1982 and 1985. Opening times and tickets should be checked on the website of the town or the gallery.
Our editors' tip
The palace is tied to the legend of «Sora Laura», said to have been Alessandro Vitelli's lover: bored by his absences, she is supposed to have lured passing young men by dropping a lace handkerchief into the street, and then killed them at an exit of the palace that still exists.
