Città_Di_Castello

Città Di Castello, a town and episcopal see of Umbria, Italy, in the province of Perugia, 38 m. E. of Arezzo by rail (18 m. direct), situated on the left bank of the Tiber, 945 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) of town, 6096; of commune, 26,885. It occupies, as inscriptions show, the site of the ancient Tifernum Tiberinum, near which Pliny had a villa (Epist. v. 6; cf. H. Winnefeld in Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, vi. Berlin, 1891, 203), but no remains exist above ground. The town was devastated by Totila, but seems to have recovered. We find it under the name of Castrum Felicitatis at the end of the 8th century. The bishopric dates from the 7th century. The town went through various political vicissitudes in the middle ages, being subject now to the emperor, now to the Church, until in 1468 it came under the Vitelli: but when they died out it returned to the allegiance of the Church. It is built in the form of a rectangle and surrounded by walls of 1518. It contains fine buildings of the Renaissance, especially the palaces of the Vitelli, and the cathedral, originally Romanesque. The 12th-century altar front of the latter in silver is fine. The Palazzo Comunale is of the 14th century. Some of Raphael’s earliest works were painted for churches in this town, but none of them remains there. There is, however, a small collection of pictures.

See Magherini Graziani, L’Arte a Città di Castello (1897).

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