Urbino, Marche, Italy

Zagan the motorhome’s repelling the rain nicely, sat on the hillside below Urbino, a city in the Italian region of Marche to rival the hilltop towns of adjacent Tuscany. The town’s provided a motorhome sosta, which is next to the swimming pool and is free, but also possesses the unfortunate quality of being entirely on a wonk. We initially parked ourselves in it (N43.73378, E12.62695), but have since made like all the other motorhomes around here and shifted to the horizontal car park opposite.

Zagan in the motorhome sosta in Urbino, where is is no longer, as it’s on a wonk

Today’s main action is brought to you in timed sections, since the action has been so thick and fast (ahem).

8:00am: The alarm goes off in Zagan. One of reaches out from under the covers and turns it off. Snoozing continues in San Marino.

8:40am: One of us finally makes a move, climbing from bed and pulling back the curtains to a sea of fog and sputtering raid. Enthusiasm for starting the day is not high, but breakfast is taken (cornflakes, double-size Lidl pack, which is now finished), coffee is supped, Charlie is fed amid enormous excitement (his), the morning’s pots are washed.

9:40am: The decision is taken to head for the coast, and we crawled off the hill.

9:55am: Rolling along the dual carriageway towards Rimini, we triumphantly exit San Marino’s borders and almost immediately find co-ordinated crews of lookie-lookie men working the traffic lights, not having much success.

10:00am: We’re unsurprised to round a corner to find someone reversing into the dual-carriageway, slowly. Intrigued, we start checking how many oncoming drivers are on the phone. About 10% is the rough answer.

10:25am: Making it to Rimini, we turn south on the S16 past the airport. A single plane sits on the tarmac, its engines covered. Jay, driving, has by this point again grown accustomed to having an Italian car driving within 2 inches of the rear bumper, overtaking at any legal, or illegal for that matter, opportunity.

10:40am: Reaching the turn off for our planned sosta by the coast, we drive right past it, since the road markings for the left turn on the dual carriageway are completely worn away. As satnav politely requests we perform the unlikely miracle of ‘making a U turn’, we decide sod it, we’ll keep going, Thelma. Ju reprograms the nav for Urbino, turning us back inland, which has tempted us via the Rough Guide write up to the town. We both wince at the ‘baked mud’ texture of the road surfaces, and rumble onwards and upwards.

10:48am: An advertising hoarding is spotted, showing Valentino Rossi and some crisps. Notably, Valentino himself is not show stuffing said crisps into his mouth, just riding past them at 180mph. All the other adverts appear to be for sex shops or lap dancing bars. Or maybe they’re the only ones I spotted.

11:30am: By this point Zagan’s driver, me, is fed up with being Zagan’s driver, feeling a little like a pilot of a bi-plane being hunted down by F-18s. Fortunately, as often happens, this coincides with us parking up in Urbino. Another brew, a dog walk, and I’m recovered. Looking around the car park, all in sight is concrete. Not much of a rival to Montepulciano, Florence or Siena, methinks.

12:15pm: We head off uphill, asking a local the way into town. “Avanti, avanti!” she smiles, pointing in the direction we’re walking. On we pushed, through the concrete flats and past a modern church (how many churches does Italy need?).

12:30pm: We find Raphael. Or at least a statue of him… He was born here, although he legged it to Rome at some point, dying there at 37.

Raphael being looked upon by one of the town’s lesser, but still rather better than I, artists

12:40pm: Ju leads us to a view of the city, through narrow, steep, brick-laid streets. Hardy a moment does she take to complain at the non-flatness of it all – ahem!

Countryside around Urbino on a misty March morning

Urbino

Steep streets in Urbino have ‘steps’ of bricks in them to give you half a chance of not going your length and handrails

1:08pm: Enough! I don’t know what we did when, I just made all those timings above up. We just ambled about the place, as we always do. This time we did make it into the Duke of Urbino’s palace though, blowing €5 each on a wander around it, which also doubles up as a museum, mostly displaying religious art. The small print says you’re not supposed to take photos, but no-one was playing the smallest bit of notice, so we grabbed a few.

The Duke’s palace was built mainly by Federico da Montefeltro roughly 500 years ago. Difficult man to work out, he funded building and surrounding town by killing for money (he was a condottieri, a mercenary), which would seem to make him a bad man, but by all accounts he treated his subjects very well, and loved the arts, so that makes him a good man? Very confusing all of this judging morality.

Window on the Ducal Palace, Urbino

The family emblem, surrounded by tongues of fire…

An almost life-sized painting in the Ducal Palace. There were a lot of paintings, most of which seemed to be of the Madonna with child

Art being what it is, we all get to decide which bits we like, woo hoo! I liked the doors, inlaid with fabulous pictures in perspective

Since I am no artist, I can only stand in awe at things like this – a small section of detail from a wall-sized sketch

Ju stayed interested far past the point all I could think about was ‘what’s for tea’?

Painting of ‘The Ideal City’

There are a couple of paintings attributed to Raphael in the Ducal Palace. This was my favourite by far, the ‘Muta’, portrait of a gentlewoman

Back into the air outside, shouts and gatherings got our attention. Urbino has a university, and like lots of other old towns (Portugal’s Coimbra comes to mind), the presence of young folks gives the old place a feeling of vitality. I like University towns for this reason, they all seem more alive, vibrant than they would otherwise.

Graduation day for this chap in Urbino

Via a roundabout route we made it back into Zagan, shifted to a flatter spot, and have since holed up out of the rain with the heating on. We topped up with LPG on the run over, so are staying toasty warm. After mucho research, Ju’s established none of the three ferry companies which do the Ancona to Split run allow camping on board, so a pet-friendly cabin has been ordered. We sail for Croatia on Easter Monday. Last few days of this particular Italian adventure to enjoy! Beer prices (and some other stuff) have been compared and Italy is cheaper, so a big stock-up is called for in the next few days!

And today’s door picture is: a brick-clad door, I love it!

Cheers, Jay