Arezzo
27/8/16
It takes about an hour to drive from Valliano to Arezzo. Broadly speaking you go via Citta di Castello and then turn left across country. The journey is fine but nothing particularly noteworthy on route.
I ended up parking near the Archeological museum. To be honest, I think this was probably a mistake. The parking was for a maximum of two hours. My guide book, the Rough Guide to Tuscany and Umbria was worse than useless for finding somewhere to park. Be warned! It shows the ice cream parlours in Arezzo, but not the car parks. When I went online subsequently there does look to be a fair amount of car parks nearby and indeed I think they are €3 for the day. I therefore think if you aim for the bottom of the Corso Italia you will not go wrong when it comes to car park spaces.
Walking up Corso Italia will take you up through the old town. It is a relatively gentle climb up to Casa San Francesco but after that the Duomo itself is a steep climb further on. Be warned the visiting times in the Rough Guide are now incorrect. The cathedral was shut and so was the museum of modern arts. The shops mostly seemed to be shut in Arezzo between 1/1.30pm and 3/3.30pm.
The church of San Francesco is a bit frustrating to be honest. It is half way up the Corso Italia and a bit off to the left. It is a fairly large and quite light building and most of the walls, apart from the choir of the church (which is at the far end of the church) if you coming through the main door. There are remnants of frescos covering the side walls but they are isolated and only small pieces remain. If you think of a jigsaw which no one has completed and with the pieces spread out over a wide area you would have some sort of idea of the effect.
The choir at the end by Piero Della Francesca is fabulous. I also think it is impossible to photograph or certainly it was beyond my capabilities. Send me copies if you manage to do better than I did! It has either suffered less from the damage done to the other frescos or it has been restored. I do not know which. From the noise made by a crying baby in the side chapel while I was visiting I can certainly vouch for the fact that the cathedral has (sadly) excellent acoustics. In front of the choir hangs a crucifixion which looks very old. It does not obscure or detract from the frescos behind it, it rather adds to the overall impression.
I then visited the Casa di Giorgio Vasari (be careful the guidebook map shows the Loggia di Vasari – which is a different building). The Casa di Giorgio Vasari is about two minutes walk from the cathedral which in turn is about 10 minutes from church San Francesco. In reality the Vasari place is ok but nothing special. A series of rooms with pretty mediocre art on the walls including a number by Mr V himself. The English translation on the notices in the museum is properly terrible. It is definitely worth reading to try to work out what the original Italian says. The best exhibit I thought is one of the last you come to, which had a statue (I think a Venus de Milo copy? ) on a raised pedestal against the background of painted figures. Her light marbled stone shone against the darker background and worked really work.
I bought a €12 ticket which also covered the San Francesco church and various galleries and museums etc including the Vasari house and the medieval museum and archaeological museum. If you are planning on doing all of these then that is probably a very cost effective way of doing it.
The walk back to the Casa Italia to the Duomo is pretty steep but short. When I went back along the Casa Italia I found a little bookshop on the right-hand side just off the Casa itself and ended up buying a notebook in which I have jotted down notes etc from our trip.
The Pieve de Santa Maria is a huge Romanesque church with lovely carved figures above the main door on your way into the church. I stopped in here on the way back to the car and t is definitely worth a stop.
The archaeological museum/amphitheatre is lovely. The amphitheatre which forms part of the museum is basically ground level only with entrances/gateways marked out, I assume the old public entrance to the amphitheatre rather than the participants. Not much to see but quite atmospheric nonetheless.
The museum forms part of one side of the amphitheatre, it has been nicely built up from the amphitheatre space. The museum is much bigger than you expect with 2 floors and well labelled and informative exhibits. Equally not too much of anything, so no getting bored!
The Etruscan funerary exhibits were amazing and strange. The pottery too was fascinating (and believe me that is not a sentence I ever expected to put on line – there is another one coming up in a moment so see if you can spot that too) Some of the designs really seem to be capturing movement/emotion.
The pottery is coralene style which I had never heard of. Its distinctive characteristic is raised beads and glass and here the pottery had lovely red clay with reliefs. There is one section of the display cabinet showcasing erotic coralene pottery. But it is placed as low as possible level so although it clearly labelled “erotic designs” you would have to actually get down on your hands and knees to see (apparently). The opposite of the top shelf policy is placing something like that at a level where only the kids can see it easily.
The whole archaeological museum is definitely worth another visit.
If you are thinking of planning a visit one good local website I came across was ArezzoOra.it