Cortona
Cortona is a town in the Province Arezzo, Tuscany. It is one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan League. Located at the altitude of 600 metres, it has magnificent panoramas to every point of the compass. It is near the city of Arezzo which was the location of the film "Life is Beautiful" by Roberto Benigni, and becoming increasingly popular in the recent years thanks to the book "Under the Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes and the film with the same title based loosely on the book.
Closest train station is "Camucia-Cortona", with direct trains from Florence and Rome or "Terontola-Cortona" with direct trains from Florence and Venice. You can also take a train to Arezzo and then another train to "Camucia-Cortona". A bus is leaving every 30 min from the Camucia station to town. Taxi is available in front of the Camucia station and Terontola train station however apparently there are only few taxi serving this "route". If you want to be sure that there is taxi for you, ask your hotel to book one for you. The other option could be rent a car and you can do it right outside of Terontola-Cortona train station and use your car to reach your destinations.
The prevailing character of Cortona’s architecture is medieval with steep narrow streets situated on a hillside (altitude 600 metres), embracing a view of the whole of the Valdichiana. From the Piazza Garibaldi (still referred to by the local population by its older name, Piazza Carbonaia) is a fine prospect of Lago Trasimeno, scene of Hannibal's ambush of the Roman army in 217 BC (Battle of Lake Trasimene). Parts of the Etruscan city wall can still be seen today as the basis of the present wall. The main street, via Nazionale, is the only street in the town with no gradient, and is still usually referred to by locals by its older name of Ruga Piana, or "level street".
Inside the Palazzo Casali is the Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca, displaying items from Etruscan, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations, as well as art and artefacts from the Medieval and Renaissance eras. The distinguished Etruscan Academy Museum had its foundation in 1727 with the collections and library of Onofrio Baldelli. Among its most famous ancient artefacts is the bronze lampadario or Etruscan hanging lamp, found at Fratta near Cortona in 1840 and then acquired by the Academy for the large sum of 1600 Florentine scudi. Its iconography includes (under the 18 burners) alternating figures of Silenus playing panpipes or double flutes, and of sirens or harpies.
Within zones representing waves, dolphins and fiercer sea-creatures is a gorgon-like face with protruding tongue. Between each burner is a modelled horned head of Achelous. It is supposed that the lampadario derived from some important north Etruscan religious shrine of around the second half of the fourth century BC. A later (2nd century BC) inscription shows it was rededicated for votive purposes (tinscvil) by the Musni family at that time. The Museum contains several other important Etruscan bronzes.
Etruscan chamber-tombs nearby include the 'Tanella di Pitagora' (halfway up the hill from Camucia), two at the foot of the hillside at Il Sodo, and a complex in Camucia itself. Il Sodo I contains pitch-roofed chambers of slab construction with an inscription, and can be visited. Il Sodo II contained a large stone-stepped altar platform with carved sphinxes devouring warriors.
The town's chief artistic treasures are two panels by Fra Angelico in the Diocesan Museum, an Annunciation and a Madonna and Child with Saints. A third surviving work by the same artist is the fresco above the entrance to the church of San Domenico, likewise painted during his stay at Cortona in 1436. The Diocesan Museum houses also a group of work by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, known as Lo Spagnuolo, called Ecstasy of St. Margaret. The Academy Museum includes the very well-known painting Maternità of 1916 by the Cortonese artist Gino Severini. There are also examples of the works of Pietro Berrettini, called Pietro da Cortona, pupil of Andrea Commodi.
