Cortona in Tuscany

On 26 April we left London for Cortona, Italy -- flying to Florence and taking the train to Cortona, about 1 hour south of Florence. Chuck was participating in a conference there on the uses of computers and information technology in maritime applications. His office was partially sponsoring the conference and the subject is, of course, of professional interest to him.

The flight to Florence was routine and the train station and railway service were no problem. Cortona is one of the Italian hill towns of considerable fame. As described on a tourist web site: "The town hangs by its fingernails from the top of a mountain, with views of the surrounding landscape below." That's pretty accurate. These towns were heavily fortified during the period of the Middle Ages and it's easy to see they would have been almost impregnable at the time. But many of them, like Cortona, have histories that go back to even before the Romans -- to the Etruscans and, again in Cortona's case, to well before them. The city is believed to be at least 4000 years old.

The actual conference venue was just outside the town walls in a 15th century palace (called "Il Palazzone") built by "Cardinal Silvio Passerini (1469-1529), Bishop of Cortona, who had the stately building constructed as evidence of the power obtained by his own noble family, which had remained loyal to the Medici dynasty". [1] The building was donated in the 1960s to the University of Pisa by the Cardinal's descendants and is quite spectacular, with much of the original furniture still present and with numerous works of art, including excellent frescos on the walls and ceilings of many of the large rooms (including the one where the conference met). It was almost disorienting to sit in a room surrounded in all directions by works of art of the Renaissance while discussing computer technology and its applications.

Of course, being a hill town, Cortona's streets and byways are very steep. In fact, the 30 minute walk from the Pallazone to the heart of the town at Piazza de Republica would probably have taken only 15 minutes if on level ground. The town looks very much as it must have looked in the medieval era -- or maybe even earlier. All around the ancient buildings (still in complete daily use, many nicely modernized inside) are the remnants and walls of earlier buildings and boundary walls -- many from the Etruscan era.

The Pallazone was our hotel for the three nights of the conference, but its doors are closed at 8 pm (there is no permanent hotel staff there) and our arrival on Monday was expected to be at 9:30 pm or so. So we arranged to spend that first night in a hotel in the town proper -- the Hotel di San Michele. It, too, is in an ancient building that was obviously the home of one of the town's richer families, but it has been lovingly renovated. Our room was right under the roof tiles -- see the picture. We moved into the Pallazone for the next two nights where, frankly, the room was not nearly as nice.

On Tuesday evening we walked into Cortona together and had a very nice dinner at a small restaurant run by a young couple just off the Piazza. On Wednesday, during the work day for Chuck, Kathi explored the town at greater length and took many of the pictures you will find at: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/2773087#147628506. One of the unexpected highlights was when she ran across the annual town parade to commemorate the liberation of the area by the US Army in World War II. The conference closed with a dinner at a hotel near the Pallazone which used to be a monastery. On Thursday morning it was back to Florence by train and London by plane, via Frankfurt, Germany.

[1]. Thanks to: http://www.sns.it/en/scuola/luoghi/palazzodicortona