Introduction to Cortona

34km (22 miles) S of Arezzo; 105km (63 miles) SE of Florence; 194km (120 miles) N of Rome

Cortona sits implacably on a green mountainside above terraced olive groves, stony yet inviting. It's a steep medieval city where cut-stone staircases take the place of many streets, and views over the wide Chiana Valley stretch south to Umbria's Lake Trasimeno. Cortona has truly punched above its artistic weight; it spawned (among others) the great pre-Michelangelo painter Luca Signorelli and the early-17th-century painter/architect Pietro da Cortona. (Witness the very respectable church embellishments and the particularly rich collection of the tiny Museo Diocesano.)

The city's roots are deep and long. It claims to be no less than "the mother of Troy and grandmother of Rome," and legendarily had its start when Dardanus (who'd later go to Turkey and found Troy) dropped his helmet (corythos) during a battle -- not an overly auspicious beginning for the town he founded here and named Corito. Cortona was already a thriving city by the 4th century B.C., when it was one of 12 cities that formed the Etruscan confederation. New finds at Melone II, one of the several Etruscan tombs dotting the hillside and valley below the town, suggest it may have been an even more important center than previously believed.

Even though it was long in a fairly undervisited corner of Tuscany, Cortona never succumbed to the all-too-common fate of becoming a dusty abandoned backwater. It retained a good bit of passeggiata action most evenings on the Rugapiana ("flat street," a nickname for Via Nazionale, the only road in town that even comes close to fitting that description), and in summer the city hosts a modest outdoor film festival in the Parterre Gardens behind San Domenico. Its art treasures ensure a steady stream of tourists, and the 140 University of Georgia students who descend every summer to study art help keep it on its toes -- and make it the only place in Italy where you'll find wrinkled old olive farmers wearing "Go Dawgs!" sweatshirts.

However, the huge popularity of Frances Mayes's book Under the Tuscan Sun, about buying and renovating a villa just outside town, has hurled Cortona from relative obscurity to the forefront of Tuscany tourism, just behind Florence, Siena, Pisa, and the Chianti. Expect more crowds than you'd, er, expect for a town this size, especially in summer.