Abstract
In this article we introduce a new class of non-commutative projective curves and show that in certain cases the derived category of coherent sheaves on them has a tilting complex. In particular, we prove that the right bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a reduced rational projective curve with only nodes and cusps as singularities, can be fully faithfully embedded into the right bounded derived category of the finite dimensional representations of a certain finite dimensional algebra of global dimension two. As an application of our approach we show that the dimension of the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a rational projective curve with only nodal or cuspidal singularities is at most two. In the case of the Kodaira cycles of projective lines, the corresponding tilted algebras belong to a well-known class of gentle algebras. We work out in details the tilting equivalence in the case of the Weierstrass nodal curve $zy^2=x^3+x^2z$.