Sansepolcro

Sansepolcro, formerly Borgo Santo Sepolcro, is a town and comune founded in the 11th century, located in the Italian Province of Arezzo in the eastern part of the region of Tuscany. Situated on the upper reaches of the Tiber river, the town is the birthplace of the painters Piero della Francesca, Raffaellino del Colle (a pupil of Raphael), Matteo di Giovanni, Santi di Tito and Angiolo Tricca. It was also the birthplace of the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, and of Matteo Cioni, who translated Piero della Francesca's treatise about perspective in painting (De prospectiva pingendi) into Latin. Today, the economy of the town is based on agriculture, industrial manufacturing, food processing and pharmaceuticals. It is the home of Buitoni pasta, founded by Giulia Buitoni in 1827. According to tradition the founding of the town came about through two 9th-century pilgrims to the Holy Land, Arcanus and Giles, who returned to the region and built a chapel dedicated to Saint Leonard—whose ruins now lie underneath the current Cathedral of Sansepolcro—where they established a monastic way of life. They had brought a stone from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (thus, San Sepolcro) with them from that shrine which led to the name of the monastery, as it became a popular site. It soon grew to become the Benedictine Abbey of Sansepolcro (the Badia). The monastery was declared an abbey nullius. The first historical mentions of Sansepolcro date to 1012, referring to the construction of the monastery, around which a commune began to develop due to its being declared a market town by the Emperor Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor. The abbey chose to affiliate itself with the monks of the Camaldolese Order, based in the area, in the following century. During the conflicts between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the town's factions were headed by prominent local families, including the Pichi, Bercordati, Graziani and Bacci.