Lapidarium Archaeological Museum

It is currently set up on the ground floor of the Ducal Palace and occupies a part of the eastern wing between the courtyard of honor and the Renaissance Square. It is articulated in five rooms open to the public in 1986, hosting the materials of what was the Museum of Old Inscriptions, or Lapidarium, wanted by Cardinal Giovan Francesco Stoppani. It held the urbinary legacies from 1747 to 1756. The most significant nucleus of the epigraphic collection consists of the inscriptions that Monsignor Fabretti (1619-1700), noble urbinate, had transferred from Rome to the hometown, adding to the rest found in the Marche region during his stays in Urbino. Numerous epigraphs were dispersed at his death and were subsequently recovered by Monsignor Stoppani, a pontificate bonded between 1747 and 1756 with the precious help of the Passer, who made on this occasion numerous reconnaissances and accurate searches throughout Montefeltro; to the original collection Fabretti were then added other epigraphs which were found in the Museum of the Apostolic Palace of the Legation of Urbino. According to the use of the era, they were walled up in the overlays divided into twenty-two mirrors, while numerous reliefs, portraits, urns, and cipps were placed along the opposite wall, covering a wide period of time until the Renaissance. The war events of the last world conflict forced to dismantle and store in the warehouses of all the material, which only recently (1986) found a new accommodation in the five rooms where the original breakdown of the twenty-two mirrors is replicated.