Pietrarubbia, where Montefeltro is told.

To the gaze betrayed by the distance they seem brothers, brothers with faces too similar not to be confused. Approaching me, however, I understand the trick played by nature to the enemies of the past, and today to me: On a hill there is what remains of one of the most important fortresses of the ancient Duchy of Urbino, that of Pietrarubbia, on the other, a small village of the same name; on the other, opposite, a rocky agglomeration so bizarre to earn the name of  small Italian Stonhenge and seem a fortress. And’ Pietrafagnana, a chilling place, which in the bad season at first glance convinces the most’to stay away. In those parts the only welcome guest would seem to be the wind, a wind that never stops sweeping the stones and the few shrubs stubborn to life, grown here and there as if for a challenge.

I stare for a moment from a distance at those reddish stones, their size completely out of the ordinary. The vague sense of restlessness that I have in my head already darts from the nape of my neck, runs down my spine like a tiny, very fast reptile and causes a slight jolt to my shoulders, and then to my head. I take my eyes and my thoughts away from Pietrafagnana and I take the road that leads to the castle.

To welcome me the village outside the walls, a polished town like a young girl in the waiting room of a fashion house, where the center of Artistic Treatment of Metals wanted by the artist Arnaldo Pomodoro, the beautiful Church of San Silvestro, a museum and an inn have managed to carve out their own space. Yet, I discover, the municipal capital has no residents: they have all fled from down in the more comfortable and less charismatic hamlet of Mercato Vecchio. On the other hand, a town born for war never has an easy life in peacetime. However, someone can always be found in the village, someone driven to climb up here out of curiosity, or more often out of nostalgia.

The most ancient and suggestive part of the place è however, even higher. And’ la Torre del Falco, all that remains of a fortress declared impregnable in the fourteenth century. Bitterly disputed by Malatesta and Montefeltro, the feud ended up in the hands of the latter in 1463, when the lordship of Rimini was nearing its end.

Brands of walls soaked in blood and history, a history a millennium old, are those on which I clumsily m’inerpico. Fearful of a wrong foot, I look down: from up here the few houses in the valley below seem far away, as tiny as breadcrumbs. My God, I wonder what must have gone through the head of a medieval enemy, there’in the bottom of the cliff, at the idea of having to deal with a castle of such prodigious power.

I cautiously retreat from the ledge on which, poor fool, I've been poking myself. I'm still dizzy. I sit down. To my ears comes a barking dog and the rustle of dry grass under heavy footsteps. From the path emerges a gentleman in his sixties, very thin, wrapped in a flannel shirt like a pole in his flag.

“You canò't take anything”  makes it clear right away.

“Don't worry” I say, “your fortress I'll leave it to you in one piece”.

She squares me from the highest hair up to her’toe. The grimace on his face gradually melts away, but he can't quite get into the shape of a smile. Then he whistles and calls the dogs to himself. He pulls some cheese out of a pouch and cuts two pieces that he tosses to the animals. With a nod he lets me know that if I want some I only have to ask, but I shake my head and say thank you.

“There were Montefeltros here” he informs me. “Nice, isn't it?”.

Men and women of the Ducato d’Urbino are like this, very attached to their land, both rugged and splendid, and, like good border people, always careful not to be fooled by foreigners. It seems that a gene has been passed down, at least in part, from generation to generation: a gene that makes people reluctant to bow and scrape. In short, they don't want it too long in these remote areas of the Apennines, and the flies from their noses tend to be removed quickly, before they become a real nuisance. Odantonio, the first Duke of Urbino, understood this at his own expense when, one fine morning in July 1444, his subjects, prematurely tired of his anguish, forced the doors of his beautiful palace, pulled him out from under the bed, half dead with fear, and made him render his soul to God. A similar fate, some time before, had befallen the Francaleoni in nearby Urbania.

And Pietrarubbia? Sì, also she has had its noble massacre. It was 1299 when Corrado, the Lord of the place, was slaughtered by an angry population that did not spare even his family. The tradition explains precisely with this fact of blood l’unusual reddish color that presents the local stone.

But the inhabitants of this enchanting piece of land between Romagna and Marche also know how to be loyal and sincere: qualities that are also evidently part of the same gene mentioned above. And in this regard, I would like to recall from the chronicles an event which took place at the beginning of the 16th century, when Cesare Borgia Cesare Borgia entered the lands of the Montefeltro with deception and occupied them. It was not swords and crossbows that revolted against the usurper, but pitchforks and pitchforks: those of the peasants. It was San Leo, to the cry of “Felt! Felt! ” the first village to drive out the militias of the treacherous enemy. Soon, the fire became indomitable and spread through every town, square and street of the Duchy.  Guidobaldo, unlucky and kind ruler, guessing a return of the fearsome Borgia, demolished the most formidable fortifications so that the powerful rival could no longer take possession of them. And to those who accused him of madness, the last of the Montefeltros sentò to say that “there is no stronghold stronger than the heart of my people”.

Don't let us forget that the last of the Montefeltros, the last of the Montefeltros, did not have the power to destroy the most formidable fortifications.

So don't let yourself be fooled by appearances: rough manners don't last long and mistrust is easily drowned in a few words or, even better, in the good wine of a tavern.

Sitting on a tall, damp, yellow grass, the flannel shirt owner and I talk. We talk until the sky turns first pink and then purple. My interlocutor's pupils roll all the way to Pietrafagnana. We'd better go now, he says. All of a sudden his face becomes serious again, pulled.

I wonder if he is worried about having to walk in the dark on the way back, a sort of mule track where the holes are deeper than the soul of a saint or, rather, if it is not the legend of Lucifer's Finger that upsets him. Yes, because on the account of our little Stonhenge that now stands out in the twilight in front of us, the popular imagination has really indulged itself: in fact, the strange pile of rocks in the distance may remind us of a fortress, or an immense hand. A hand that the legend identifies as the hand of the Angel of Evil, who would have been thrown by the Creator at the moment of betrayal in this strip of land of Montefeltro. The most elongated boulder of the complex, similar to a tower, would be the index of Lucifer pointing to the sky and would seem to want to imply that the games between good and evil are not yet closed.

Accarezzo di cani cani" (I attack the dogs).

I pacify the dogs and greet the man with a handshake, then I start walking towards the car. Today I have put in my backpack a new story, a story that I can not wait to tell.

The story is a new one.

Pietrarubbia and Pietrafagnana, Heaven and Hell at a stone's throw from each other, where wonder has an unparalleled sinister charm. Enjoy your visit!

If you want to visit the ancient Duchy of Urbino, go first to ilfederico.com, you will find a lot of information!