From its 585 metres over the sea, Cortona shows you one of the most harmonius and largest views of Italy, and with the superb towers hits the visitor quoting Henry James,nearer to the sky then to the railway - station.
This town finds its origins in legends and mysteries. In Virgil you can read that in Dardano, himself Jupiter, is son in son after founding Cortona, left for Troy.
The recent archaeological diggings at the Melone II of the Sodo after a provvidential support to the mistic tradition of this place and the recovery , right in the historical center, of a big shed of the VIII century after Christ seems like a real message of Dardano. Anyway, anciently it was one of the most important etruscan Lucomonie and greek and latin writers from Erodono to Diogenes of Alicarnasso, from Tito Livio to Plinio the old remembered it their norks.
The city of Cortona had a considerable development between the VIII and theVII century a C. and dominated the valley of the Chiana, which was very productive.
A significant witness of the hegemony and the value of the "etruscan princes" in the countryside of Cortona is the architecture of the big funeral tombs of the VII and VI century a.C., situated in the immediate surroundings and a series of archaeological
repertes non in the Etruscan museum. Amongthese others the "etruscan chandelier" of the V. century a. C., decanted in one of the three sonnets by Gabriele D'Annunzio dedicaded to the "Town of Silence".
Nearby the lake of Trasimeno on June 24 th. 217 a.C., Hannibal, during the second punitive war, provoked, damaging Rome and the army of Flaminio one of the most bloody massacres history remembers.
we will talk about Cortona again during the late Middles Ages with personalities and artistic and religious expressions of important suggestions, to continue until our days with important events and the impressive figures of Luca Signorelli, Pietro da Cortona and Gino Severini.
From the hill, Cortona faces the countryside of the Valdichiana, with lots of important villas and harmonious farm-houses in the enormous wine-yards, ready to magnify their antique and storical, delightful fruits.
And if Plinio il Giovane talks about a delicate white wine from Cortona called "Etesiaca", pope Paul III of the Renaissance, liked to have a big stock of these products of the wine-yards, while Giosuè Carducci often got inspired only with a barrel of the "superb wine" of Cortona.