The National Gallery of the Marche preserves a vast patrimony of works of art that includes paintings and sculptures from the XIII to the XVIII century, ceramics, coins, drawings and some furnishings, to which are added the decorations of the rooms of the Ducal Palace of Urbino, the splendid home desired by Federico da Montefeltro. The famous leader and patron of the city owes its mark to the city of Urbino in this period, thanks to the refined choice of decorators, especially from Florence and Lombardy, and of avantgarde artists and architects such as Piero della Francesca or Leon Battista Alberti, through which it definitively transforms the cultural and urban context.
The names of the architects who worked on the building - Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio - are flanked by those of the artists whose works are exhibited in the gallery and which recall the cultural climate of the age of Frederick including the painter Giovanni Santi and his celebrity son Raffaello, Pedro Berruguete but also later as Federico Barocci and Tiziano. 
In addition to the Gallery, the Palazzo Ducale houses on the ground floor the Archaeological Museum and Ladipario which originated in collections of epigraphs gathered in Urbino by Fabretti.