The history of Mondavio is the story of the Malatesta, the Montefeltro, the Della Rovere families; it is the story of such an impregnable city as the majestic and suggestive Rocca Roveresca, built between 1482 and 1492 by Giovanni Della Rovere, duke of Mondavio. It is the story of a city designed based on the image of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man: the head is represented by the Fortress, Roma street is the body, St. Francis’ the heart, and all other streets and alleys are the limbs. The peculiar octagonal basis and trapezoidal walls of the Fortress that generate a remarkable optical effect, as if they winded up upon themselves, were meant to stand all firearms and mortar shells.
Built after a drawing by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, with their support turret, the mighty polygonal keep and the five wide storeys, they are a masterpiece of the Renaissance military architecture. Since the second half of the Seventeenth Century, the Fortress was used as a jail but nowadays it hosts the Historic Memory Museum and the Armoury: chalk statues of soldiers and such war machines as catapults and movable towers are faithfully reproduced there. The Fortress is also animated with Renaissance evenings, enacted in the banquet hall or into the keep: people leave their everyday clothes, dress like Renaissance ladies and knights and, using no pieces of cutlery, have typical Fifteenth-Century gamebased dishes. Torches and candles enlighten the rooms, dance shows gladden the evenings. A special mention deserves the historic re-enactment of the Boar Hunt, where the Fortress is the stage for shows of duellists, bow shooting and theatre performances.
Mondavio