CORTONA

The city Virgilio wanted to found from the mythical Dardano was probably one city fortified from the Umbri, passed then to the Etruschi from the VIII century b.C and it became an important Lucumonia. It received the roman citizenship during the social war, and from that time we don't have any sure news.
Cortona had one flourishing life in the communal period and therefore under the lordship of the Ranieri Country houses. Sold from the King of Naples to the Fiorentini in 1411, from then it followed the Granducato of Tuscany fates. Constructed on a builtress of the mount S. Egidio, Cortona is encircled from big walls, levigates from the centuries and by the wind, in which the ancient doors open in correspondence of the roads that go up from the plain. The visitor who watches it round from the high of its walls will see one of the widest and harmonious panoramas of Italy: the fertile and immense Val di Chiana sluice to the horizon from the mounts of Siena, between which they detach the Amiata and the Cetona and even closer the great mirror of the Trasimeno Lago.

The tombes discovered in the campaign below are numerous. Anyway the most famous is the Tanella di Pitagora, the Melone di Camucia and the Hard one. The reports conserved in the museum of the Etruscan Academy in palazzo Casali , between which the famous Etruscan chandelier of the V century b.C.. On the top of the hill the fortress dominates. Under it the reconstructed Sanctuary of Margherita Saint, from which they degrade the steep ways to the stones of the city degrades. Of great importance is the civil architecture with many of the medioevali and renaissances palaces. The numerous churches are splendid, from that Roman-gotic of S. Agostino and S. Francesco, to the Renaissance jewels of Santa Maria delle grazie( Calcinaio )and of Santa Maria Nova, to the silent church of S. Niccolò. Cortona was native land of the painters Luca Signorelli and Pietro Berrettini, famous here like Pietro from Cortona. Gino Severini was born in Cortona, too. Exceptional is the pictorial patrimony of this city of art conserved in the Diocesano museum between which stands the "Annunciazione del Beato Angelico".

Cortona the center of tourist, geographic and historical area is situated in the southern part of the province of Arezzo, rises nearly to the centre of it, on the declivity of a hill covered by green olive-groves, catching up the 651 m. on the sea level in its higher point, that it is the fortress of Girifalco. It enjoys a charming view: to its feet the beautiful Val di Chiana, surrounded to the horizon by a hill escape, between which they detach the volcanic cones, by now extinguished, of the Cetona and the Amiata and from that limpid water mirror that is still the Trasimeno Lake. This magnificent panorama can be admired in all its extension from the Fortress, from the large square of S. Margherita, the Garibaldi large square and the public walk that, leaving from the garden, cuts the hill to half.