Perugia

That power was turned inward. In 1375 the Perugians rose against the papal legate and razed his fortress at Porta Sole, but the feud between nobles and the popular party soon opened the gates to lords: the condottiero Biordo Michelotti, stabbed to death in 1398; then Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan; and in 1416 Braccio da Montone, an exiled Perugian noble who took the city by force and ruled it with moderation. From 1438 the Baglioni family governed from behind the communal offices, and under their patronage Piero della Francesca, Pinturicchio and the young Raphael worked in the city.

The Baglioni were destroyed by their own violence. Their war with the Oddi turned the heart of the town into a barricaded camp, and in the Red Wedding of 14 July 1500 Baglioni conspirators massacred their own kinsmen. The popes put an end to it. In 1540 Paul III forced Perugia to buy its salt from papal salt pans at twice the price it had paid Siena; the citizens left salt out of their bread rather than pay, were excommunicated, and surrendered that June to the army of Pier Luigi Farnese. On the ground where the Baglioni houses had stood, they were made to build the Rocca Paolina, a papal fortress that, they said, took the sunlight from the streets below.