Bufalini Castle - San Giustino
The history of the castle is indissolubly tied up with the Bufalini family, who could boast of having successful and prominent figures in the ecclesiastic, literary and juridic fields.
Castello Bufalini was originally built as a military fort and owned by the Dotti, a Ghibelline family from Sansepolcro. After the battle of Anghiari, in 1440, the small fort became a military outpost in defense of the territory of Città di Castello, and was destroyed towards the end of the 15th century on orders of the Florentine Republic.
With the passing of the property to Niccolò di Manno Bufalini in 1487, some reconstruction work based on the design of the Roman architect Mariano Savelli and indications of Giovanni and Camillo Vitelli, men of arms and experts in military construction, was carried out. The castle assumed the semblance of a fortress, with an irregular quadrangular floor plan and four towers at the corners, one of which—the Main Tower or Keep—was larger than the others and surrounded by a wide moat filled with water.
Starting from the 1530s, the fortress was transformed into a noble palace, responding to precise artistic, social and cultural needs, as desired by Giulio I Bufalini and his brother, the Abbot Ventura. The major changes mainly affected the interior, with the creation of large rooms distributed around an internal court with two side porticos, the remake of the façade with the introduction of the loggia and the monumental entrance in a central position dates back to that period.