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CORTONA
The city has been built on a steep green mountain
side. It is a calm and peaceful
medieval city, and many of its
streets are actually staircases
cut into the stony hillsides. You
get a beautiful view of the
wide Chiana Valley stretch south
to Umbria's Lake Trasimeno.
Cortona prides itself as a city
that promotes art, and the great
pre-Michelangelo painter Luca
Signorelli and the
early-17th-century
painter/architect Pietro da
Cortona were natives of the town.
The sculptures on the church and
the rich collection of the tiny
Museo Diocesano do support this
claim.
The
city’s history is long, this is
not surprising as it asserts that
it is the ancestor of the cities
of Troy and Rome. Legend has it
that the city was founded when
Dardanus, the founder of Troy,
dropped his helmet here during a
battle, and later he built the
town on the spot and called it
Corito. Cortona was already a
thriving city by the 4th century
B.C., when it was one of 12 cities
that formed the Etruscan
confederation.
The
city does not have much by way of
tourist attractions, but neither
is it an neglected backwater. The
city plays host to an outdoor film
festival in the Parterre Gardens
behind San Domenico during the
summer, and its art treasures
ensure the visit of a steady flow
of culture tourists. Besides this,
one hundred and fourty students of
the University of Georgia come
every year in the summer to study
art
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