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The town is located about 15 kilometres south of Perugia on a hillock that overlooks the Tiber Valley. The old village is set against the historic fortifications and three gates in this traditional defence system lead into the old centre. The civic towers loom above the walls, together with the bell tower of the Gothic-style San Francesco church, consecrated in 1388.
Central, square-plan Piazza dei Consoli opens with a handsome
fountain (1848) and continues with Palazzo
Comunale, which houses the municipal picture gallery.
This boasts an important collection of paintings from the churches
of San Francesco, Sant'Antonio and the San Giacomo hospital. The
most interesting nucleus comprises a part of the Lione Pascoli collection. There are also
works by Alunno, Perugino, Baciccio and a Guido Reni. Further on, next to the
church, there is the former convent of San Francesco, which houses
the regional Alunno, Perugino, Baciccio and a ceramics museum since 1998. Here a
wealth of materials and culture are to be seen, classified in
chronological order from the Middle Ages to 1930. This is an
especially qualifying and significant itinerary, with thematic
inserts that go from flooring to great ceremonial dishes, from
loving goblets to tableware, fruit bowls, salt-cellars, tankards and
pharmacists' vases. Ancient Via Tiberina, at the lower edge of
Deruta, is the location where the new town developed, especially in
the 1950s, with numerous craft workshops for producing artistic
majolica, which is the craft most of Deruta's inhabitants are
involved in, even today.
Production of ceramics in Deruta goes back centuries. There is documentation of this art form dated 12 August 1290 and states that there was "payment in kind" with "unam soumam vasorum". This was the archaic period with production of objects of common use: jugs, bowls, basins, covered with geometrical and zoomorphous decorations. The dominant colours are copper-speckled green and manganese brown.
Deruta majolica achieved the apex of its
magnificence in the centuries that followed and in the 1500s spread
throughout major cities and not just in Italy. Artists like Giacomo Mancini (El Frate) and Francesco Urbini sign works of great
significance. Ceremonial dishes, loving goblets, birthing sets,
noble crests, present a repertory of motifs with female figures,
mythological scenes, battles and religious images. Numerous, diverse
and original decorations span through floral, zoomorphous and
grotesque, floral volutes, overlaps of peacock feather eye, crown of
thorns, wolf's tooth, petal back. In the meantime the palette of
colours was enhanced with orange, blue and yellow. Lustre technique
began to emerge, with splendid golden glimmer in the most valued
works.
Floors, such as that in the church of San Francesco at Deruta (1524), Santa Maria Maggiore at Spello and the Sacristy at San Pietro in Perugia,
are all further testimonies of the best quality Deruta majolica
production. Over the centuries, style and decoration evolved into
the "Compendiario" of quick
strokes and the "Calligrafico" of
Moorish inspiration with interwoven leaves, flowers, arabesques,
birds and other animals.
In the eighteenth century a period
of decline arrived, but this notwithstanding the reaction of Gregorio Caselli can be noted, with the
establishment at Deruta of a factory of fine pottery for producing
imitation porcelain. After the Unification of Italy there was a
significant recovery thanks to the commitment of Angelo Micheletti,
Alpinolo Magnini, David Zipirovic and Ubaldo Grazia. Ceramiche Sambuco Mario & C. snc pottery works and its production are a modern example of the top
quality levels that Deruta majolica has achieved over the years.
The origins of Deruta are still in part obscure, as shown by the various names that it has taken over time: Ruto, Ruta, Rupto, Direpta, Diruta, which means "ruined". The name Deruta appears to derive from the last in the list. Certainly it has deep-rooted ties with Perugia, whose southern bulwark it has always been, out towards Todi. The fortified appearance is a surviving testimony of this role. In the thirteenth century Deruta had its own Statute, followed in 1465 by a new document in the vernacular. A series of outbreaks of plague in the mid-1400s wiped out the population and even brought about a reduction in the town's fortified walls. During the Salt War (1540), Deruta took sides against the Pope and was pillaged and destroyed. When Perugia became subject to the Church, Deruta also enjoyed a long period of peace. This was precisely the time when manufacturing of artistic majolica developed and took Deruta into the international limelight.
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