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The largest city in the interior of Tuscany, Arezzo is divided into two parts, the upper city with its many art treasures and the lower, more recent and commercial.

Casentino

The Casentino is the valley in which the first tract of the river Arno flows; it is one of the four valleys in which the Province of Arezzo is divided.
North of Arezzo on the border of Emilia Romagna this part of Tuscany is one of the least known and most solitary and unspoiled. Leaving Arezzo by the State Highway you come to the village of Monterchi famous for the fresco of the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca which was painted for a local cemetery but was removed to a more suitable place.
The Museum in Palazzo Taglieschi in the small town of Anghiari has a beautiful wooden polychrome Madonna by Jacopo della Quercia.
The next is Sansepolcro, a town famous for its Renaissance character and for being the birthplace of Piero della Francesca.

Caprese Michelangelo is the birthplace of Michelangelo Buonarroti, born 1475. At the time his father was the local governor, and the family lived in residence which is now a Museum dedicated to the town’s famous son.

The sanctuary at Verna is where Saint Francis founded a monastery and where in 1244 he received his Stigmata. Visible from afar as it is perched on top of a calcareous mountain in the middle of a forest, it has since grown and today includes not only Saint Francis’s cell, but also various churches and chapels.
The Benedictine monks founded their order at Camaldoli in the middle of another forest which has remained intact in accordance with their wishes and is today run as a national park.
This area is a place of great tranquility in an enchanting setting; it inspires a feeling of peace and calm. The magnificently conserved medieval Castello di Poppi is the permanent home of the Battle of Campaldino collection.

Val Di Chiana

This area includes the countryside which produces the famous Chianna cattle, from which comes the well known "Florentine Steak". It seems that the pastures in the area, irrigated by the Lorena River, give the meat of the cattle which graze there a particular taste and a unique tenderness.
Cortona is the largest town, almost fully surrounded by Etruscan walls, later rebuilt in part during the middle ages.