Cortona
ALying high on the hillside at over
2000 ft a.s.l., amidst olive groves and vines, Cortona
looks out over one of Italy’s most sweeping and
stunning panoramas. The town’s origins are lost
in the mists of time and legend: Virgil claims Dardanus
to have founded Cortona before travelling to the Orient
to found Troy. Greek writers such as Theopompus, Aristotle
and Lycophron maintain that Ulysses ended his life in
Cortona. What we do know for sure is that Cortona was,
in Etruscan times, one of the twelve Lucumonies. The
Greeks called the town Croton; Livy names it Cortona
whereas Virgil, in the Aeneid, refers to it as Corytus.
The town’s massive and imposing walls, the sumptuous
collection of funerary furnishings preserved in the
Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca and other precious
artefacts all bear testimony to its Etruscan past. The
recent discovery of the monumental tomb named “Melone
II del Sodo”, dating back to the first half
of the 6th century B.C., brought back to the fore the
town’s prominent role within the Etruscan civilization
and art.
Cortona became a roman colony under
Lucius Cornelius Silla. On June 24 217 B.C., during
the second Punic war, one of the bloodiest massacres
in history took place in the immediate vicinity of the
town, on the shores of Lake Trasimeno, where the roman
legions led by Consul Flaminius were crushed by Hannibal.
During the barbaric invasions Cortona was razed by the
Goths in 450 A.D. and only centuries later, in the 13th
century, did the town surface anew in history as a free
Commune, minting its own coinage and often in open war
with Arezzo. Cortona sided with the Ghibelline faction
and was visited by emperors Frederick II of Sweden and
Henry VII of Luxembourg who bestowed privileges on the
town. In 1325 the Casali family, as a reward of their
political merits, were conferred the Seigniory of the
town which they held as late as 1409. In 1529 Cortona
followed the fate of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, first
under the Medicis and later, from 1737 on, under the
Lorenas, to become eventually, after the 1860 plebiscite,
part of the newly-born Kingdom of Italy. Cortona’s
buildings, churches and illustrious sons bear testimony
to its medieval and renaissance past.
Il
Palazzo Casali is one of Cortona’s most important
and dignified buildings. Its façade was designed
in the early 17th century by architect Filippo Berrettini,
whilst the interior goes back to the 14th century. The
building was the official residence of the Casali family,
lords of the town and houses today the Accademia Etrusca,
the Academy museum and the town-library.
The town-hall: the building’s oldest sections,
dating back to the 13th century and including the Council
Hall, are still to be clearly seen on the side walls
bordering the passage from Piazza della Repubblica to
Piazza Signorelli.
The bell tower and the ample frontal steps were added
later starting from the 16th century.
Palazzo Passerini, built in the 13th century, was the
residence of the Captain of the People and together
with the town-hall building stands lofty and austere
over the town centre. The building was donated in 1514
to Cardinal Silvio Passerini and here, one year later,
stayed Pope Leo X, a personal friend of Passerini’s.
Palazzo Mancini-Sernini, at the top of Via Guelfa is
the current seat of the Banca Popolare di Cortona. A
barely legible time-worn inscription on the building’s
ornate and elegant façade reminds us of the first
stone being lain in 1533.
A short distance across the street,
on the left hand side, at numbers 11 and 15, you may
observe the elegant figure of two other Renaissance
buildings. On the highest part of the hill stands mighty
and proud the Fortezza Medicea of Girifalco, a superb
military monument built on the ruins of a previous fortress
raised by Arezzo-Guelfs in 1258. The fortress was re-fashioned
into what can be seen today in the first half of the
16th century, under Cosimo de’Medici, by architect
Francesco Laparelli, a collaborator of Antonio da Sangallo.
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