Joanne's long walks: Via Romea Germanica Day 102: Cortona

Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors... disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.

- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

A delicious breakfast at our luxurious accommodation Il Frantoio was followed by two painful experiences: settling the bill, and climbing the steep hill up to Cortona that we should have climbed last night, completing yesterday's stage. We came through the gate in the Etruscan walls of the city of Cortona and headed for the cathedral, but there was no-one there to stamp our pilgrim credentials. So we climbed higher, up to the convent and church of San Francesco, where we found the guardian priest; he did not have a stamp, but signed and dated our credentials to certify our passage through Cortona.

The cathedral of Cortona, with sculpture

San Francesco

A bit of history: Cortona

Cortona was an important member of the Etruscan League or Lucumonia in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, due to its strategic position ensuring control over the surrounding territory. In the 4th century BC the Etruscans built the imposing walls that surround the city for about 3 km, the tombs scattered around the city that are now referred to as "melon tombs" because of their shape, and a unique monumental funerary altar adorned with sphinxes. The Tabula Cortonensis found here is a bronze sheet with one of the longest surviving inscriptions in the Etruscan language.

The Tabula Cortonensis (photo and information from Wikipedia)

In 310 BC many Etruscan cities were subdued by Rome, and Cortona made an alliance with Rome which however was not respected and led to a violent clash near Lake Trasimeno.

Cortona eventually became a Roman colony under the name Corito, but under Roman rule the city lost much of its influence, as the Via Cassia, the main Roman road through central Etruria, led directly from Chiusi to Arezzo, bypassing Cortona.

Hannibal besieged and attacked Cortona during the Second Punic War, in the famous Battle of Trasimeno. The hamlet of Ossaia, not far from the battlefield, is said to be so named because the remains of the dead were amassed in an ossuary there.

Traces from the Roman period can also be found in the names of local hamlets such as Metelliano, derived from the toponym of the patrician family Metelli, and Centoia, an ancient checkpoint near the via Cassia, seat of a Century, sub-unit of the Roman army.

The Goths occupied Cortona in 450 AD, and Cortona was sacked and destroyed in the final stages of the Gothic War (535–554).

In the 13th century Cortona was an independent city-state, but it was conquered by Naples in 1409 and sold to the Medici family in 1411.

View from Cortona

Walking downhill out of the city, we ran into a small group of walkers on their way to Perugia to join the Walk for Peace from Perugia to Assisi on Sunday. It was so nice to chat with them and walk in company that we followed them too far and had to backtrack a short way to get back onto the Via Romea Germanica; if we'd stayed with them, we would have ended up on the wrong side of Lake Trasimeno, heading for Perugia instead of Rome!

We wound our way down the hill, passing by a beautiful 16th-century villa which is now a department of the prestigious educational institution La Scuola Normale di Pisa: what a beautiful, tranquil setting for learning! We also passed within a mile of Villa Bramasole, subject of Frances Mayes' book Under the Tuscan Sun.

We stopped at the early medieval church of San Michele Arcangelo and asked Don Piero, the parish priest who lives beside the church, to stamp our pilgrim credentials. Don Piero has a small accommodation for pilgrims available on a donation basis in this beautiful spot, but we couldn't have made it this far yesterday: it was another ten kilometres from our agriturismo, and with a large hill in between, too!

Our route wound along pleasant country lanes over the plain to Ossaia, where we stopped outside the church to eat our lunches: the church was closed, but there were benches, shade, and a drinking fountain.

Looking back toward Cortona, framed by grapevines

The church in Ossaia

A bit of history: the hamlet of Ossaia

Like many small villages, Ossaia came into being along the minor Roman road that later grew into the Via Romea Germanica. The hamlet, population approximately 230, is located at the point where the plains of the Val di Chiana meet the gentle slopes of the surrounding hills, which are terraced and planted with olive groves.

The origin of the name Ossaia for this area, which even in Roman times was dotted with villas and estates belonging to Roman nobility, is tradionally associated with the word "osso", meaning bone. The site is held to have been a burial ground for those who died in the famously bloody battle between the Romans and the Carthaginians under Hannibal, which took place nearby on the shore of Lake Trasimeno in 217 B.C. Hannibal's troops took the Romans by surprise in a narrow passage beside the lake, killing 15,000 men on the spot and taking another 15,000 prisoners.

A Latin plaque in the church of San Biagio e Cristoforo in Ossaia reads:

Nomen habet locus hic Ossaria ab ossibus illis
Ouae dolus Annibalis fudit et hasta simul.

But historians are skeptical about this etymology; it would seem that Ossaia, as well as other nearby places, including Sepoltaglia and Sanguineto, are names that actually refer to crops cultivated by Roman settlers, or in any case to far less bloody events than that of Hannibal.

Resuming our walk, we passed by the kennels of Ossaia: lucky dogs, living in "boneland"! Though right next door to the kennel is the municipal slaughterhouse: a juxtaposition emblematic of humans' contradictory relationship with other animal species.

During the lunch stop I took off my long-sleeved shirt and zipped off my trouser legs: in October the mornings are cool, but it is as warm as summer in the afternoon! Especially when walking over the valley floor, in full sunlight.

Somewhere just before reaching Petrignano we crossed the boundary between Tuscany and Umbria, and then walked along the imaginary line of the border for a while. Another region completed on the Via Romea Germanica! When we reached Petrignano, we celebrated this achievement over a beer in the local bar with Gianni, an ospitalero friend I met through the association of volunteer pilgrim hosts Accoglienza Pellegrina who lives only a few kilometres off our route. Gianni then drove us ten kilometres back into Tuscany, to an apartment that used to belong to his mother, which he renovated recently and which is currently empty; he gave us the use of the apartment for the evening! After we had showered and changed, Gianni picked us up again and we all went to a restaurant in nearby Cervognano specialising in handmade pici: basically fat spaghetti, as they explain in the useful English-language explanation of different types of pasta in their handwritten menu. Every town in Tuscany claims to make better pici than all the others, but I've been assured that the true original pici are from the Valdichiana, and so is aglione, like garlic but much bigger, and milder in flavour.

Judging from the pici all'aglione served at La Bottega di Cervognano, I'd say that must be correct!