Tuscany In Wedding helps you planning your wedding and select the most charming venues and locations of Tuscany where celebrate your marriage
Cortona, Arezzo and the spiritual mountains
Cortona is a delightful small city, strategically placed, between
Tuscany and Umbria, seated on a hill 600m above sea level, dominating the
entire Val di Chiana valley as far away as Montepulciano. The Medieval
architecture of Cortona has remained perfectly intact. But even before this the
city was one of the 12 confederate Etruscan cities ( along with Arezzo,
Perugia, Fiesole, Volterra, Chiusi and Tarquinia) until 310 BC when they were
defeated and placed under the patronage of Rome. You can visit the
archeological sites and the many Etruscan tombs around the city or the ruins of
the imposing defensive walls built by the Etruscans. The city has become famous
more recently thanks to the book ‘Under
the Tuscan Sun’ written by American writer Frances Mayes, and made into a film,
which is set in this Tuscan town. Cortona is an excellent base for visiting
Umbria and the south of Tuscany, including Montelpulciano or Pienza
09 - Cortona, Arezzo and the spiritual mountains
Who
knows what went through Dante Alighieri’s head when, at the beginning of the
year 1300, exiled from Florence after the party of the Guelfi Neri had gained
the upper hand over that of the Guelfi Bianchi, to which the sublime poet
belonged, saw once again, from his vantage point in the castle of Romena, where
he had taken refuge with the Conti Guidi, lords of the Casentino, the Piana of
Campaldino and the silhouette of the castle of Poppi emerging from the autumn
mists. A few years earlier, in 1289, he had fought there in the ranks of the
victorious Florentine army, that bloody battle against the inhabitants of Arezzo
that signalled the latters’ final submission to Florence.
Perhaps his glance will have run upwards, towards the mountains, from
which the clear waters of the young Arno, mentioned by him in the Divine
Commedia, race downwards, across the Casentino, and where about a century
earlier, Francesco d’Assisi, who had refused the hatred and the violence of the
arms, preferring love and brotherhood amongst men, had taken refuge in
meditation and prayer. On a crag of bare rock that overlooks the whole valley he
had founded his first monastery, La Verna, today site of an important monastic
community and object of pilgrimage from all over the world. It was on this spot
that the Saint, in 1224, first manifested the stigmata.
Francesco was not the only one to find in the tranquillity and solitude
of the woods of the Casenti ...
... no the ideal place to seek God. Some years earlier
another hermit, San Romualdo, settled in Camaldoli, founding the order of the
Camaldolesi Monks and an important monastery. Here several centuries later
Lorenzo de’ Medici and his court of intellectuals, poets and artists would pass
the summer months in conversation with the monks about theology and philosophy.
It is to the monks’ unceasing and hard work of reforestation and their love for
nature that we owe this imposing forest, at one time the main source of
firewood for, first, the Florentine Republic and, then, the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany. Today this forest is a national park, where the wolf of the Appennines
has managed to survive, and in fact today is starting once again to gradually
increase in number.
Extraordinarily rich in wildlife, the park includes the natural reserve
of Sasso Fratino, where all human activity is absolutely forbidden, a wooded
area whose vegetation has remained virtually unchanged since the last ice age
of Wurmiana 12,000 years ago. Not to be missed is the spectacle that the change
in colour of the leaves offers in springtime and above all in autumn, when the
chestnuts and beechtrees are completely covered in gold.
But the province of Arezzo, which the
Casentino is part of, has not only been home to mystics and woodsmen. It was
also the birthplace of great artists of the Renaissance such as Michelangelo
and Vasari, both of whom, however, soon moved to Florence. One artist who
instead remained profoundly connected with his land and who left a marvellous
trace of his art here is Piero della Francesca, originally from San Sepolcro,
almost on the border with Umbria. It is in his native city that two of his
masterpieces can be found, “La Resurrezione" and “La Madonna della
Misericordia”, while another of his marvellous frescos showing a pregnant
Madonna, “La Madonna del Parto”, is kept at Monterchi. The real masterpiece of
Piero, “La Leggenda della vera Croce”, beyond a doubt among the most important
cycles of frescos of Italian painting can be found in Arezzo, in the Church of
San Francesco. If only for this Arezzo is worth a visit. If you go on the first
weekend of the month you will find the whole city transformed into a
fascinating and colourful antiques market. And, since you’re already there, do
not forget to visit Cortona, not far away, one of the oldest Italian cities,
founded by the Etruscans, with its imposing boundary walls still standing.
Cortona, nowadays even more famous after the book “Under the Tuscan sun”, has
in fact maintained almost intact its medieval architecture. In the diocesan
museum you can also see masterpieces of religious inspiration by notable
artists of the Renaissance such as Beato Angelico, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Luca
Signorelli.
