Gubbio () is an Italian town and comune in the far northeastern part of the Italian province of Perugia (Umbria). It is located on the lowest slope of Mt. Ingino, a small mountain of the Apennines. History The city's origins are very ancient. The hills above the town were already occupied in the Bronze Age. As Ikuvium, it was an important town of the Umbri in pre-Roman times, made famous for the discovery there in 1444 of the Iguvine Tablets, a set of bronze tablets that together constitute the largest surviving text in the Umbrian language. After the Roman conquest in the 2nd century BC – it kept its name as Iguvium – the city remained important, as attested by its Roman theatre, the second-largest surviving in the world. Gubbio became very powerful in the beginning of the Middle Ages. The town sent 1000 knights to fight in the First Crusade under the lead of Girolamo of the prominent Gabrielli family, who according to an undocumented local tradition, they were the first to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when Jerusalem was seized (1099). The following centuries in Gubbio were turbulent, featuring wars against the neighboring towns of Umbria. One of these wars saw the miraculous intervention of its bishop, Ubald, who secured Gubbio an overwhelming victory (1151) and a period of prosperity. In the struggles of Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Gabrielli, such as the Cante dei Gabrielli (c. 1260–1335), fought for the Guelph faction, supporting the papacy. As Podestà of Florence, Cante exiled Dante Alighieri, ensuring his own lasting notoriety. In 1350 Giovanni Gabrielli, count of Borgovalle seized power as the lord of Gubbio. His rule was short, and he was forced to hand over the town to Cardinal Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, representing the Papal states (1354). A few years later, Gabriello Gabrielli, the bishop of Gubbio, also proclaimed himself lord of Gubbio (). Betrayed by a group of noblemen which included many of his relatives, the bishop was forced to leave the town and seek refuge at his home castle at Cantiano. With the decline of the political prestige of the Gabrielli, Gubbio was thereafter incorporated into the territories of the House of Montefeltro. The lord of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro rebuilt the ancient Palazzo Ducale in Gubbio, incorporating in it a studiolo veneered with intarsia like his studiolo at Urbino. The maiolica industry at