A guide to Cortona (AR): what to see, where to eat, where to sleep, the truth about the Tuscan town made famous by Frances Mayes's book. Etruscan history, architecture.
Cortona is a town with a problem and a blessing in the same phenomenon: Frances Mayes's book "Under the Tuscan Sun" (1996) and the 2003 film with Diane Lane made it famous across the whole English-speaking world, creating a tourism of romantic expectations that doesn't always match the real Cortona. The real Cortona is more interesting than the novel: an Etruscan town 2,600 years old, with one of the most important Etruscan collections in Italy, a near-intact medieval system of streets and squares, and a position on a hill that commands the Valdichiana with a view reaching all the way to Lake Trasimeno.
Cortona is one of the twelve cities of the ancient Etruscan League, probably founded by the Etruscans in the 8th-9th century BC on a hill already inhabited in the Neolithic. The Etruscan town had cyclopean walls (still partly visible) enclosing an area far larger than today's medieval town. Roman rule, then Lombard, then Aretine, then Florentine from 1411, each phase left traces layered onto the urban fabric. Luca Signorelli (1445-1523), one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, was born in Cortona, and many of his works are in the town's Museo Diocesano (the one holding the Annunciation considered his masterpiece).
Cortona: tours & tickets
Compare guided tours, skip-the-line tickets and day trips for Cortona.
See availability & prices →We may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.The MAEC (Piazza Signorelli 9, www.cortonamaec.org, €10 adults) is the main reason any archaeology lover should visit Cortona. The Etruscan collection includes the Etruscan Chandelier, a 5th-century-BC ritual bronze candelabrum (450-400 BC) of extraordinary size (60 cm across, 16 oil lamps) with figurative decoration of rare complexity. It's one of the most important Etruscan bronze objects in the world, and the main reason the Louvre and the British Museum could never claim supremacy over the Etruscan archaeology of Cortona. The museum also has Egyptian finds (a 19th-century donation), a Roman section, and a medieval section.
The Museo Diocesano of Cortona (Piazza del Duomo 1, €5, inside the former church of the Gesù) has two absolute masterpieces that justify the visit on their own: the Annunciation by Luca Signorelli (c. 1490, considered the artist's best work) and the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Luca Signorelli (1502). There's also a Madonna by the Sienese painter Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1290) and works by Fra' Angelico (who lived in Cortona). For anyone who loves 15th- and 16th-century painting, the Museo Diocesano of Cortona is a small great museum, without the Uffizi queue and at the same quality level for the two Signorelli masterpieces.
The center of Cortona has two connected squares that together form the medieval heart of the town: Piazza della Repubblica with the 13th-century Palazzo Comunale and its outdoor staircase, and Piazza Signorelli with the Teatro Signorelli (1854) and the Palazzo Casali (now home to the MAEC). The bar-pasticceria on the main square opens at 7:00, and breakfast with a view over the valley is one of the most pleasant things to do in Cortona.
The Etruscan walls of Cortona (8th-5th century BC) are visible around the town's perimeter, with some stretches built of cyclopean stone blocks (up to 3m x 1m) the Romans couldn't have shifted even if they'd wanted to. The Meloni del Sodo (3 km from the center, reachable on foot or by car) are two monumental Etruscan tumulus tombs of the 7th-6th century BC. Melone II has a stone sacrificial altar carved with reliefs of serpents and a griffin that has no parallel in Etruscan archaeology. Free access during the site's opening hours (variable, check ahead).
The film (2003, directed by Audrey Wells, with Diane Lane) was shot partly in Cortona and partly in other Tuscan towns (some scenes in Positano, not exactly Tuscany). Frances Mayes's house ("Bramasole") really exists, a private villa in the countryside outside Cortona, not open to visitors. Mayes's book (1996) is an actual memoir, not a novel: she and her husband really did buy a house in Cortona in the 1990s. The "Under the Tuscan Sun" tourism brought Americans and Britons to Cortona in numbers, the town knows it, handles it with irony, and meanwhile has the MAEC with the Etruscan Chandelier that 83% of the "Mayes" visitors never go to see.
Cortona has no train station in the center. The nearest is Camucia-Cortona (3 km downhill) on the Florence-Rome line via Arezzo. From Camucia a local bus climbs up (€1.50, 15 minutes, variable frequency) or a taxi (€8-12). Trains: from Florence SMN ~1h15 (regional trains); from Roma Termini ~2h30 (regional trains via Arezzo); from Arezzo ~25 min. Parking in Cortona is outside the walls (the historic town is a ZTL), with free lots around the perimeter. The walk from the parking to the center: 10-20 minutes depending on the entrance.
Cortona's restaurants have felt the effect of literary tourism, and many are pricey and mediocre, aimed at the English-speaking tourists who arrive with romantic expectations. The best: Osteria del Teatro (Via Maffei 2, €35-50/person), quality Tuscan cooking, booking required; Trattoria Dardano (Via Dardano 24, €20-30/person), a historic Cortona trattoria, the most authentic in the center; Ristorante La Bucaccia (Via Ghibellina 17, €30-45), a 14th-century medieval cellar with quality Chianina cooking (the local cattle breed). For a cheap lunch: the Locanda del Loggiato on the square, local bread and cured meats at €8-12.
Cortona sits in the Arezzo Valdichiana with quick access to other Tuscan and Umbrian destinations: Montepulciano (30 km, 35 min), the town of Vino Nobile, almost identical to Cortona in medieval structure but with wine as the lead; Pienza (45 km, 50 min), the Renaissance town of Pius II, with Pecorino di Pienza DOP; Orvieto (60 km, 1h), the Etruscan-medieval city on its tufa cliff with the most beautiful Duomo in Umbria; Lake Trasimeno (20 km, 20 min), Italy's fourth-largest lake with accessible beaches and Passignano sul Trasimeno. From Cortona by car you reach Florence in 1h30 and Rome in 2h30, a logistically ideal base for exploring all of central Italy. The Arezzo (28 km, 30 min) of Roberto Benigni and of the director Luca Guadagnino (who is from Crema but often works in Tuscany) has the Pieve di Santa Maria and the Basilica di San Francesco with Piero della Francesca's frescoes ("The Legend of the True Cross", one of the most important 15th-century fresco cycles in Italy).
Italy has a rail network connecting all the main cities, and the train is almost always the best choice between the big ones. High-speed trains (Frecciarossa, Italo) link Rome-Milan in 3h, Rome-Florence in 1h30, Rome-Naples in 1h10, often faster than flying once you count airport time. Regional trains (slower, less comfortable, but very cheap, €5-15) cover the secondary routes. A rental car is useful for: the coasts without rail (the Amalfi Coast, the Cilento, Tyrrhenian Calabria), the agriturismo in the countryside, the Dolomites away from the main centers, and the inland villages the train doesn't reach. The apps: Trenitalia (www.trenitalia.com) and Italo (www.italotreno.it), book online for the best prices.
Tipping in Italy isn't mandatory and there's none of the English-speaking social pressure. Restaurant: the coperto (€1-3/person) is already on the bill, so if the service was excellent, rounding up the bill or leaving €2-5 is appreciated. Taxi: rounding up to the next whole figure (from €12.40 to €13) is the norm. Hotel: €2-3 a day for housekeeping (left in the room in the morning) is appreciated. Café-bar: no tip expected, maybe 10-20 cents left on the counter. Never tip by card: in Italy the tip always goes in cash, to be sure it reaches the staff and not the owner's till.
Quality Italian products at the right price are found outside the tourist zones. The rule: the farther you are from a famous monument, the more real the prices. For food: Italian supermarkets (Esselunga, Coop, Conad) sell DOP prosciutto, pecorino, artisan pasta, and DOP extra-virgin olive oil at normal prices, while the shops near the Pantheon or the Duomo sell them at 3x the price. For fashion: the Italian factory outlets (Fidenza Village in Emilia, The Mall near Florence for Gucci, Prada, Ferragamo at outlet prices) offer the big brands at 30-70% off. For leather: Florence has quality leather artisans away from the center (Oltrarno, Via dello Studio) at prices 40-50% below the tourist boutiques of Via de' Tornabuoni.
Italy is the only country in the world that was, for 1,500 years, the cultural, religious, artistic, and political center of the European continent. Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire for centuries; then Rome was the seat of the Pope, the spiritual center of 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide; Italian was the language of European diplomacy from the 14th to the 17th century; the Italian Renaissance (Florence, Venice, Rome, Milan) redefined the art, architecture, literature, and science of all of Western civilization. That historical weight is physically present in Italy, not in textbooks but in the walls, the floors, the museums, the churches, the streets. To walk through Rome is to walk over 28 centuries of layered history. That historical density is what no other European destination can replicate, not France, not Spain, not Greece. Each of those countries has its own greatness, but the concentration and continuity of the Italian inheritance has no parallel.
Yes, with one caveat. The most overcrowded destinations (Venice, the Cinque Terre, Positano, the Colosseum in the peak summer hours) have real overtourism problems that degrade the experience. But Italy has 300,000+ villages, 58 UNESCO sites, 20 regions with different cuisines, and the vast majority of this heritage isn't overcrowded. People who come to Italy and only do Venice-Rome-Florence in August see the worst version of Italy. People who add Matera, Tropea, Alberobello, inland Sardinia, Molise, the Cosenza side of Calabria, see the best version. Italian overtourism is a problem of distribution, not of total saturation.
For a 1-2 week trip: the basics (grazie, prego, buongiorno, quanto costa, dov'è) are enough, and they're repaid with human warmth proportional to the effort. For anyone moving here or making repeat trips: Italian is one of the easiest languages for speakers of another Romance language (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian), and one of the most beautiful in the world. Learning Italian deeply changes how you experience Italy: reading menus in the original, understanding historic signs, following conversations in the bar, reading the local papers, it turns the trip from an outside view into participation.