Villa Imperiale stands on the slopes of Monte San Bartolo, near Pesaro, and is one of the most important residences of the Italian Renaissance. Its original nucleus was built in the fifteenth century for Alessandro Sforza and owes its name to the visit of Emperor Frederick III, who symbolically laid the foundation stone of the building in 1468.

In the sixteenth century, the complex was extensively transformed. At the behest of Francesco Maria I Della Rovere and Eleonora Gonzaga, Girolamo Genga designed the expansion of the residence and the renovation of the Sforza nucleus. Courtyards, loggias, terraces and gardens arranged along the slope create a close relationship between architecture and landscape, characteristic of the court culture of the Urbino Renaissance.

The rooms of the Villa preserve an important cycle of sixteenth-century wall paintings, created as part of the decorative campaign directed by Genga with the participation, among others, of Francesco Menzocchi, Raffaellino del Colle, Agnolo Bronzino, Camillo Mantovano and the Dossi brothers.