03 - Piazza Del Popolo - Nature and Architecture

“…On one side of the square is the old Palazzo Ducale. Now the seat of the prefecture, with an imposing façade characterized, despite the simplicity of its lines, by sophisticated devices…The first floor overlooking the square is occupied by the council chamber which has a magnificent coffered ceiling, painted and gilded. Although it was retouched by the hand of an artist no less than our worthy host of the Hotel Zongo, as he told me with honest pride, it retains its original state if it were not for some cracks and a certain dirt. Among the emblems of the ceiling is the oak tree, the coat of arms of the Della Rovere family to which the last dukes of Urbino belonged”.

So writes Jackson passing through Piazza del Popolo.

In the 1920s the original battlements of the palace were restored. Maybe he managed to see them in the inlays of the church of Sant’Agostino, a masterpiece that is often ignored due to the impossibility of reaching the space behind the altar which is poorly lit: and yet Pesaro is represented with rare refinement of details.

Surely, however, our traveler noticed in the Palazzo Ducale the solution with which Genga links the architectural part with the concept of nature: painting delicate frescoes that create spatial continuity in the same way as in the Villa Imperiale, the true destination of Thomas Jackson.