Cortona, Italy City Guide
For over 20 years, Pamela Lanier's Cortona, Italy Travel Guide has been your connection to Cortona's tourism community with invaluable details on local attractions, restaurants, shopping, museums, history, outdoor recreation and more.
Introduction
 About 80 kilometers from Florence, perched on a mountainside above terraced olive groves and steep narrow streets, awaits the storybook medieval city, Cortona. The view of the Chiana Valley from atop Cortona is lovely, creating a serene and peaceful landscape surrounding this imposing and once powerful city that stretches south to Umbria's Lake Trasimeno. Cortona proclaims itself a "City of Art," with great grandfathers like pre-Michelangelo painter Luca Signorelli and Pietro da Cortona. Frances Mayes' book and later movie, “Under the Tuscan Sun,” brought visitors back to Cortona in droves, now one of the most popular tourist destinations just behind Florence, Siena, Pisa, and the Chianti. Whether a romantic escape for two or a historical travel through time, Cortona delivers and should not be missed in your travels through Tuscany. It's the seat of Etruscan civilization in Italy, and the place St. Francis of Assisi chose to spend his final days.
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