Urbino, restorer's complaint: facade of Palazzo Luminati degraded, intervention needed

One of the most interesting historical palaces in the center of Urbino lies in a state of abandonment and degradation: we are talking about Luminati-Lucciarini Palace and to denounce the conditions of the building is a restorer, Antonella Napolione, a graduate student in Conservation of the Historical and Artistic Heritage at the University of Carlo Bo-Urbino.

The palace was erected at the end of the 15th century by the Luminati family: the probable client was Giovannino di Pier Antonio di ser Paolo Luminati, who ordered a building that is close in stylistic characteristics to the great architectural masterpiece of the Urbino Renaissance, Palazzo Ducale (so much so that Luminati-Lucciarini Palace can also be attributed to the same Francesco di Giorgio Martini who directed the work on Palazzo Ducale from 1477). It originally had a facade covered with plasterwork decorated with frescoes and graffiti, of which only a few fragments remain today.

According to Napolione, the facade of the Palace (which is, moreover, listed) is in a state of preservation that requires intervention: it would be necessary, according to the restorer, to secure the fragments of frescoed plaster, fixing them to the brickwork on which they are still partly adhered, and to consolidate the parts of plaster and decoached pictorial film that require it.

“The emergency situation in which the facade of the Palace finds itself and the state of degradation of the painted decorations,” Napolione tells us, "leaves no more time and it is necessary to intervene as soon as possible. Since 2007 there has been no news, absolute silence, around the interventions underway or planned for the protection of a Palace so important not only for Urbino, but as an artistic heritage.

The degradation of the façade and frescoes of Palazzo Luminati has been known for years to the owners and the competent authorities, but they all offload the responsibility for non-compliance now to the Superintendent on duty, now to the area official of the Superintendence for Architectural Heritage,who by the way has been the same for years, and therefore knows well the issue of Palazzo Luminati, now to the Mayor, now to the urban planning office, or to the Unesco Site office."

Napolione also explains that she has sent numerous PECs to the relevant authorities without receiving a response, or at most being told by the office on duty that the matter was not within the competence of the recipient. Yet, Napolione points out, there is a long sequence of documents on the state of the façade, starting as far back as 1981, when the Azienda Autonoma di Soggiorno e Turismo for denounced the installation of electrical cables by ENEL on the façade of Palazzo Luminati and fixed directly on the frescoes, which was followed by a letter from Superintendent Luisa Polichetti, specifying that permission was lacking for the installation of the cables on the facade to the detriment of the frescoes (the cables, moreover, are still there). Instead, the restoration project signed Studio Agorà - Architect Massimo Casolari dates back to 1999, with subsequent letter of approval from Superintendent Enrico Guglielmo. On May 16, 2000, Mayor Franco Galluzzi sent a letter to all the owners of the palace to ask them to hold a meeting on May 19, 2000 and discuss the work needed and to be done on the palace, but one of the owners, on June 21, objected to the execution of the work.

The events continued in 2004 when Superintendent Liana Lippi confirmed that Palazzo Luminati was formally protected under the former Law 364/1909 with a measure dated 16/3/1910, still valid under Legislative Decree No.490 /99 by virtue of Art.13. Then, in 2007, the then President of the Italian National Commission for UNESCO, Giovanni Puglisi, sent a letter to Superintendent Lorenza Mochi Onori requesting an audit of the actual situation of the state of conservation of the decorations on the facade of the Palace. Again, shortly thereafter, in February of the same year, Mayor Franco Corbucci wrote to Puglisi and the Ancona Superintendent of Environmental and Architectural Heritage to complain about the state of deterioration of the decorations on the facade of the Palace. On August 10, a letter arrived denouncing the extremely precarious state of the facade’s decorations and the fact that Dr. Lorenza Mochi Onori jointly with the Ancona Superintendence for Architectural Heritage had carried out an inspection in accordance with Legislative Decree 42 of 2004. Finally, on September 27, 2007, Ancona Superintendent Enrico Guglielmo approved the plan of works proposed by the project submitted by Studio Agorà in the person of architect Massimo Casolari.

According to Antonella Napolione’s estimates, given the size of the facade, it will take between 27 and 30 thousand euros, including scaffolding, materials and labor (and excluding permits and the cost of public land authorizations) to fix the situation, with the work expected to take about 30 days and to be carried out by professional restorers. “I think this is an amount that can be tackled,” Napolione concludes, “and above all easily found if all the public and private figures involved would cooperate and concretely decide to do something for Palazzo Luminati.”

Urbino, restorer's complaint: facade of Palazzo Luminati degraded, intervention needed

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