CITTA DI

CASTELLO  , a town and episcopal see of Umbria, Italy, in the province of Perugia, 38 m . E. of Arezzo by rail (r8 m. direct), situated on the left bank of the Tiber, 945 ft. above sea-level . Pop . (1901) of town, 6096; of commune, 26,885 . It occupies, as inscriptions show, the site of the ancient Tifernum Tiberinum, near which Pliny had a villa (Epist. v . 6; cf . H . Winnefeld in Jahrbuch des deutschen archaologischen Instituts, vi . Berlin, 1891, 203), but no remains exist above ground . The town was devastated by Totila, but seems to have recovered . We find it under the name of Castrum Felicitatis at the end of the 8th century . The bishopric dates from the 7th century .

The town went through various

political vicissitudes in the middle ages, being subject now to the emperor, now to the Church, until in 1468 it came under the Vitelli: but when they died out it returned to the allegiance of the Church . It is built in the form of a rectangle and surrounded by walls of 1518 . It contains fine buildings of the Renaissance, especially the palaces of the Vitelli, and the cathedral, originally Romanesque . The 12th-century altar front of the latter in silver is fine . The Palazzo Comunale is of the r4th century . Some of Raphael's earliest works were painted for churches in this town, but none of them remains there . There is, however, a small collection of pictures . See Magherini Graziani, L'Arte a Cittd di Castello (1897) .