Holiday apartment in Arezzo: culture, history and routes

File:52100 Arezzo, Province of Arezzo, Italy - panoramio (2).jpg Photo: Umbria ws via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

In Arezzo, culture, history and routes through different historical spaces come together. The city combines distinctive squares and buildings with museums, regular events, parks and routes that can be explored on foot or by bike.

Culture and history

The Museo di Casa Vasari is located in the house that Giorgio Vasari bought in Arezzo in 1541. It preserves rooms richly decorated with frescoes, whose visual programme draws on mythological, biblical and allegorical references. The museum also includes an adjacent Italian-style roof garden, which was originally larger and included vegetable gardens.

Piazza Grande is the central square of Arezzo’s historic old town. Its trapezoidal shape and pronounced gradient give the square a distinctive spatial form. The Fortezza Medicea, a 16th-century military fortress with a star-shaped ground plan and five bastions, stands on San Donato hill. Today, it is used for walks, art exhibitions and events. Parco Colle del Pionta combines a nature park with an archaeological site where Arezzo’s old cathedral once stood.

Festivals and markets

The Giostra del Saracino has taken place regularly every year since its official revival in 1931, on the Lizza of Piazza Grande; it was interrupted during the Second World War. Another regular event is the Fiera Antiquaria di Arezzo, which takes place on the first Sunday of every month and on the preceding Saturday. This market offers antiques, modernariato, vintage goods and local handicrafts.

Routes and parks

The Sentiero della Bonifica “Vittorio Fossombroni” is a 62-kilometre, bidirectional cycling and walking route that connects Arezzo with Chiusi. It enables walks and cycling tours through landscapes featuring historic water-management structures. The route begins at the Chiusa dei Monaci on the western outskirts of Arezzo. This impressive structure for regulating water flow is already mentioned in documents dating from 1115.

The Francis Way, Cammino delle Celle, also passes through Arezzo: on foot, it leads from the Santuario de La Verna to the Basilica di San Francesco in Arezzo, continues to the Eremo delle Celle near Cortona and then proceeds to Assisi.

Several parks have their own distinctive features. Parco Pertini is located just outside Arezzo’s historic old town and has equipped paths for physical activities. Parco Il Prato is a historic park in the upper part of Arezzo, between the cathedral and the Fortezza Medicea. Parco Villa Severi lies just outside Arezzo, surrounded by nature and opposite a historic manor villa. In this way, the park landscape connects different urban and rural spaces without their respective characteristics merging into one another.

Getting around

Arezzo can be reached by train from Florence and Rome; regional trains, Intercity trains and high-speed trains are available. Many museums, churches and cultural venues in Arezzo have accessible entrances, reserved parking spaces and special transport services for people with disabilities.

Arezzo railway station also has specific accessibility features: a tactile path leads from the entrance to the platforms. The raised platforms at tracks 1 to 5 provide many regional trains with low-floor carriages with direct and safe access.