Leaving from Piazza Italia, walking down Corso Vannucci for all its length, passing Fontana Maggiore and the Perugia Cathedral on your left, you will find yourself in Piazza Piccinino, with its ancient buildings and the timeless Etruscan Well.
From the XVI Century on, the history of this extraordinary display of hydraulic engineering has always been linked to the fate of the aristocratic palace in front of it. Those who owned the Palazzo would automatically become proprietors of the Well, whose cistern could be accessed from the building’s basements. Built in the XVI Century, Palazzo Sorbello takes its name from the family who owned it since the end of the XVIII Century: the Bourbon of Sorbello, now Ranieri di Sorbello. The history of the palace – which you can learn about by visiting its beautiful Museum – is deeply intertwined with the history of the family. A “foreign” family that was not born in Perugia. The Bourbon of Sorbello were in fact a branch of the Bourbon del Monte a glorious lineage that had been collecting glory and power all over Central Italy since the XII Century, also due to their legendary claim of descent from the royal French Burboun bloodline. The Sorbello were marquises who owned a small fief at the border between the Pope States and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (which is roughly the modern regional border between Umbria and Tuscany) and they moved to Perugia at the beginning of the XVIII Century.
Marquis Guseppe I, maybe tired of living in his luxurious but isolated Castle of Sorbello, decided to try his fortune in the most important and vital city of the region, dwelling in a house that he received as dowry from his Perugian wife Marianna Arrigucci. The Marquisate was inherited by Uguccione III (one of his 16 children) who bought Palazzo Sorbello, previously owned by the Eugeni-Oddi family. He took advantage of the precarious financial situation of the owner to trade his modest residence with one of the most prominent and beautiful buildings in the city. Besides its looks, there was also a specific reason why the building was so famous: in 1734, Charles III, king of Spain and the two Sicilies, lived in one of its rooms. During the War of Polish Succession, Charles III came to Italy to reaffirm his power over Southern Italy, going through Perugia which was an allied city. When he arrived in the city with his court and huge army, he was magnificently welcomed and he chose Palazzo Sorbello amongst all the luxurious accommodations he was offered. The guided itinerary of the Museum includes the “Charles III” room, which was probably the Spanish king’s bedroom. After the change of hands the room was renovated into an elegant and spacious hall.
To this day the Palace is owned by the offsprings of the family and cannot be visited in its entirety, but the best part of the ground floor and piano nobile (noble floor) are open to the public thanks to the Ranieri di Sorbello Foundation who inaugurated the Museum “Casa Museo di Palazzo Sorbello” ten years ago. The exhibition includes part of the items collected by the family since the second half of the XVIII Century. The highlight of the collection is the massive library, with more than 26,000 volumes, some of which dating back to the XIV Century.