Sansepolcro, Arezzo
Set on the River Tiber, the town of Sansepolcro is in the Arezzo province of Tuscany region. Its main claim to fame today is that it’s the home of Buitoni pasta (founded here by Giulia Buitoni in 1827 should you be interested) but less prosaically, it was the birthplace of mathematician Luca Pacioli, the 15th century Franciscan friar and ace mathematician. He taught maths to Leonardo da Vinci in fact, and was the first to describe in print the new Venetian invention of double-entry book-keeping - so a hero to accountants everywhere. Another scion is Renaissance master Piera della Francesca, and Raffaellino del Colle (a pupil of Raphael).
Myth has it that Sansepolcro was raised in 1000AD by Arcanus and Aegidius, two pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, who stopped and built the oratory here (now the site of the cathedral). We have documentary mentions of the Bendectine Abbey around this time, and the ‘centro storico’ reached its current size around 1400, being enclosed in defensive walls a century later. These defences were built by the great Renaissance sculptor, architect and military engineer, Giuliano da Sangallo, architect to the Medicis in Florence. A visit to the city must take in the Museo Civico, with works by Santi di Tito, Raffaellino del Colle, Luca Signorelli and of course by Piero della Francesca. His Resurrection hangs here, described by Aldous Huxley as ‘the greatest painting in the world’.
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