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Discover the lands of Arezzo thanks to Della Robbia's

Discover the lands of Arezzo thanks to Della Robbia's

I got the idea for this journey through the province of Arezzo from reading about the opening of the art exhibition I Della Robbia, il dialogo tra le arti nel Rinascimento, which takes place in the Museo Statale di Arte Medievale e Moderna di Arezzo (public Museum of Middle-Age and Modern Art in Arezzo) from February 21st to June 7th.

On the trail of one of the most important artistic families of the 15th and 16th centuries, five suggested itineraries invite tourists to visit not only this Tuscan capital city, but also its green valleys, beginning at the lands from which the famous Luca Della Robbia's glassy terracottas hail. Luca, progenitor of this family of artists, was able to turn clay into glazes that were resistant to the ravages of weather and time, thanks to an age old technique that he rediscovered.
So, despite the passing of much time since Della Robbia's age, their polychrome, glassy terracottas are just as shiny and bright as they originally were.

The secret of this glaze – such beauty, unaffected by time – was kept by Della Robbia's Florentine workshop for many years, thus protecting the 'monopoly' of this artistic production up until, according to Giorgio Vasari in his Lives, a woman revealed the secret to Benedetto Buglioni, which then enabled industrial production to be started.
These terracottas are just a small part of an exhibition where sculpture, painting, architecture and decorative arts stand side by side; works of the most important artists of the Renaissance: Donatello, Verrocchio, Perugino and that genius of Leonardo.

By the way, for those of you who wish to go hunting for the secrets of La Gioconda, we suggest you travel through Valdarno aretino (that is in Arezzo territory) to discover the landscape that Leonardo painted as the background to his most famous and controversial masterpiece.
Behind Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile stands out Ponte a Buriano, whose medieval arches span the Arno. At this spot, in autumn, mist rises up from the ground, to create a faded, mysterious atmosphere like the one you see in Leonardo's painting, where everything is a little hazy.

Our journey through the lands of Arezzo goes on towards Val di Chiana where the noble city of Cortona stands out; here the writer Frances Mayes set Under the Tuscan Sun, one of her most successful novels from which came the movie by Audrey Wells.
If, walking along the streets of this, the native city of Luca Signorelli and Pietro Berrettino (better known as Pietro da Cortona), you find by chance Dardano Street, on to which many 13th and 14th century buildings face, I suggest you stop for a moment at number 15, where Mancini Palace is. Next to the main door there is another smaller, narrow entrance: it's the door of the dead, which, during the Middle Ages, was usually only opened to let coffins out.
According to an Etruscan belief, Death was supposedly chased away from the house for good if the door would have been kept closed.

After all, in this part of Tuscany La vita è bella (Life is beautiful), on the big screen at least; in fact, Roberto Benigni set many scenes of the movie for which he gained international acclaim in Arezzo. The landscape of Arezzo should be very familiar to our dear, irreverent Tuscan who was born near Castiglion Fiorentino, a city that, despite of the name, is a few kilometres from Cortona, in the province of Arezzo.
The village of Manciano Misericordia has dedicated a statue to its notable countryman in Parco della Creatività (Creativity Park), while the Caffè dei Costanti, in Arezzo, an historical meeting point for intellectuals and set of the afore-mentioned movie, has an ice-cream called La vita è bella on its menu.

Our journey through this fascinating land ends here for this month. There are plenty of reasons to visit Arezzo; as Anton Giulio Barrili wrote: "If you have never been to Arezzo, I suggest you go at the first opportunity you have, even if you need to invent a pretext. I assure you that you will be grateful to me". That said, holding with the Italian writer and patriot, there is nothing left for me to do but say: have a nice holiday in Tuscany!

San Casciano 949 Daily Price: Min. € 85 Max. € 599 Number of Beds: 70

Colle Val d'Elsa 1584 Weekly Price: Min. € 460,00 Max. € 1.220,00 Number of Beds: 24

Bettolle 446 Weekly Price: Min. € 700,00 Max. € 1.350,00 Number of Beds: 13

Oltrarno Apartments Weekly Price: Min. € 750,00 Max. € 1.170,00 Number of Beds: 13