Of the other residences that shared the cares of Count Federigo, Gubbio was the most important. Sanzi describes it as facing the south-east, and flanked by mountains on the north, overlooking fertile valleys and smiling champaigns, and excelling the attractions of Urbino in charming prospects and pleasant pathways. Notwithstanding the general truth of this eulogy, nothing could be more consistent with beauty or convenience than its site, planted on a slope, with the cathedral right in front, crowded round with poor buildings, and accessible only by precipitous alleys. Its architecture is disputed between Francesco di Giorgio and Baccio Pontelli,[*131] nor would it add much credit to either, its sole merit being minute decorations in hewn work and inlaid panelling, both after the style we have described at Urbino. Although the initials of the two Montefeltrian dukes appear in these, it is believed to have been chiefly built by Guidobaldo, and the oak-tree cognisance of the Della Rovere indicates in some parts a still later date. The constant recurrence of the Garter among its ornamental devices is gratifying to the very rare English visitors of this Apennine town, but no traveller of taste and intelligence can be otherwise than shocked to find this once chosen sanctuary of Italian refinement and high breeding, the residence in which Castiglione recounted his reception at the Tudor court, and where Fregoso and Bembo were successively bishops, degraded to vile uses and menaced by speedy ruin. It is now in the hands of a person who there manufactures wax candles and silk, but on my second visit in 1843 was closed up entirely and inaccessible. I owe to the obliging attention of Signor Luigi Bonfatti, a local antiquary of taste and intelligence, who is preparing a work on the early painters of Gubbio, this notice of the building and its remaining decorations: "Differing much from the architecture at Urbino, its court-yard is very fine, of the mixed or composite style usual in that age. The windows, doors, and chimneys have stone lintels, exquisitely chiselled in low relief with masterly arabesque designs, those in the interior being touched with gold. The ceilings, now partially decayed, are all of wood, in half-relief compartments, with heavy cornices, and roses coloured and gilded. The palace was completed by Duke Guidobaldo, who commissioned the cabinet or closet of superb _intarsia_, thirteen by six and a half feet. This tiny room is nineteen feet high, but the inlaid work goes only half-way up. It is of the finest patterns and workmanship, including several emblematic representations of music, literature, physical science, geography, and war. On the cornice is an inscription now in part illegible.... It was, in my opinion, the work of Antonio Mastei of Gubbio, a famous artist in wood, who executed the beautiful choir of S. Fortunato at Todi, and who is known to have been much in favour