A single family lived in this castle for five centuries, until 1988, when it passed to the state: so inside everything is still there, furniture, pictures, books and the household archive. The Bufalini were lords of the upper Tiber valley, and from them came the mother of cardinal Mazarin, who set out from here to become one of the most powerful figures in Europe.
What to see
In 1487 Nicolò Bufalini had a square fortress built with four watchtowers, but its military use was short: half a century later a Florentine architect, a pupil of Sangallo the Younger, turned it into a residence with loggias and porticoes. The rooms were frescoed with mythological subjects, and the throne room, the room of stuccoes and the gallery of portraits remain.
At the end of the seventeenth century the counts wanted a country villa, as was the fashion among great families: it was renewed by a local artist, who also laid out the Italian garden. Beside the garden is the hedge maze, and around it the park, which is the best way to grasp how a fortress became a house for the holidays.
Visiting
The castle is in the centre of San Giustino, a few kilometres from Città di Castello and from the Tuscan border; it is visited with a ticket and generally with a guide, with shorter hours out of season, so better to check. An hour and a half.
Our editors' tip
In the throne room look at the chair: almost every noble house kept one, carved and gilded, ready in case the pope should come. In most cases the pope never came, and the chair stayed there for centuries. It is the object that explains better than any other how prestige worked in that world.