01 - Colbordolo, El paternal mio nido, Giovanni Santi Center

This stop  was developed / expanded in a Walkscape dedicated to Colbordolo. Start from the single walkscape for a detailed visit.

Colbordolo is the birthplace of Giovanni Santi, father of the great Raphael. A small town that, in the Park of Muses and Nymphs becomes a privileged observation point and an obligatory stop on the route.

Colbordolo is at the top of the area and allows a view of the landscape that collects mountains and hills, white roads and fields. Looking around the village allows you to grasp the beauty and diversity of the Valle del Foglia territory, which maintains an ancestral dimension despite the radical transformations that have occurred over time.

An ancient dimension that we first catch in the background landscapes painted by Giovanni Santi, attentive to realistic details but at the same time capable of building spaces rich in a mythical dimension; and later in the watercolors of Francesco Mingucci; and again, especially for the towns and villages, in Romolo Liverani's designs.

But Colbordolo is a privileged observatory also from a cultural point of view. 

Giovanni Santi models a perfect balance between nature and culture, between virtuosity in the rendering of details and the ability to give them an abstract and classic value. Thus Nature combines with the Muses, who live in the Tempietto created for Urbino. But it is from Colbordolo that his sensitivity to the landscape starts, refining himself thanks to the cultural climate of Urbino and making him become a great artist, a humanist and a musician.

The abandonment of "his paternal  nest" “el paternal mio nido” in 1446, following the fire of Colbordolo by Sigismondo Malatesta, and the migration to Urbino opened up the opportunity for the artist to bring the truth of the rural landscape to the cultured dimension of the Renaissance, bringing out the perpetual values that even small things have.