Cortona

We have been out of the hotel for most of the last couple of days, so I have not been able to keep the blog updated. I hope to get caught up over the next day or two, before we make another excursion on Wednesday.

Saturday afternoon our group visited Cortona, a hill town of about 2,500 on the southernmost tip of Tuscany. The Medici family purchased it in the 16^th century and constructed a fortress atop the hill. The town itself dates to the Etruscan era; according to a 17^th-century guidebook, a descendant of Noah named Crano founded the city 273 years after the Flood. (!) There are a number of significant sights in the town, including a Franciscan monastery founded by Brother Elias, the man who assumed the leadership of the Franciscan order after St. Francis's death in the 1220s. There is also the Etruscan Academy, the center of Etruscan studies in Italy, founded in the 18^th century. The Academy sponsors a museum containing the greatest concentration of Etruscan artifacts anywhere. The Diocesan Museum, across from the cathedral (technically no longer a cathedral because Cortona lost its bishop years ago), contains a number of paintings by Renaissance masters and a frescoed chapel vaguely reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel on a much smaller scale.

Unfortunately, the students did not have much opportunity to see most of these things because the bus did not get to Cortona until after 5:00 p.m., having left Citerna at 4:00 p.m. They had to get back on the bus at 7:45, so they had roughly 2-1/2 hours to explore and eat supper. Some went to the top of the hill and saw one or two of the churches; others simply spent their time shopping. Each student was given a 10-euro allowance for supper.

Foreseeing that there would not be much time for sightseeing, especially while hauling small children, I took the family to Cortona earlier; we left around 2:45 p.m., shortly after lunch. We arrived in Cortona between 3:30 and 3:45, and had time to get into two or three sights, most of which closed around 6:00 or 7:00. I went into the Diocesan Museum, and we peeked into the cathedral, in which a wedding was taking place. We hiked up to the Church of St. Francis, which contained several of his artifacts, and then continued all the way up to the Medici fortress. It was an exhausting climb, but the Church of St. Margaret and the fortress were rewarding sights, even though the latter had closed before we got there. We came back down the hill, arriving at the center of town around 7:15, and ate in a pizzeria; it was the family's first taste of Italian pizza, and everyone liked it. We got back to our car about 8:30 for the drive back. I was a bit nervous about finding our way to Citerna in the dark, but everything turned out all right.

Having the rental car is a real blessing!