The town almost certainly derives its name from the latin "Urbs bina", meaning "double town": a name which refers to its situation on two hills.
In the Roman period it became a municipium of some importance (known as Urbinum Metaurense), as it attested by the archeological finds preserved in the ducal palace and few remains of town walls and other buildings of the period.
Upon the fall of the Roman Empire, it was settled by the Lombards, then annexed to the Byzantine Exarchate and restored once again to Lombard rule.

View of the facade of the Turrets of the Ducal Palace with the Mercatale Square

It was later incorporated in the Pentapolis (together with Fossombrone, Cagli, Gubbio and Jesi), which was donated to the Church by Charlemagne. During the Middle Ages it was a Ghibelline town: around 1155 it was assigned by the Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa to the rule of the Montefeltro family. Urbino remained until 1508 in the hands of the Montefeltro family, which in a short space of time consolidated its position not only in the military and political field (extending its rule to the neighbouring towns and establishing a powerful duchy),but also in the economic and artistic fields, turning this little town into a Renaissance court of the greatest prestige, culture and refinement.

It was Federico da Montefeltro (1444-82) who was responsible for this significant trasformation, erecting the magnificent palace and turning it into a real court, peopled not only by the ducal family itself, but by the writers and artists that Federico assembled from all of Europe. From 1508 to 1631 Urbino was ruled by the family of Della Rovere, to be then annexed to the Papal State. In 1700 Giovanni Francesco Albani, from a powerful Urbino family, became Pope Clemens XI (1700-1721). The Pope turned the attention of the Roman Catholic Church to the needs of the town. Churches were restored, buildings repaired, artists and painters flowed into Urbino once again. The history of the town remained linked to the Papal State until 1860, when it became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

Federico da Montefeltro

Besides its remarkable artistic collections, including some of the production of Raffaello Sanzio, who was born and lived here, the exceptional interest of the town of Urbino resides in the fact that its location and history kept its kernel essentially unchanged from 1508 to the present. The walled-in town center is a labirinth of cobblestoned alleys flanked by brick buildings, and, even without the dominating Ducal Palace and Cathedral, would represent a prime example of perfectly preserved Renaissance fortified town.