Cetona

Orange Flag of the Italian Touring Club

Surrounded by greenery, on the slopes of the mountain of the same name, on the border between Umbria and Tuscany in the lower Valdichiana of Siena, the village of Cetona has very ancient origins.

These are documented by the Civic Museum for the Prehistory of Mount Cetona, which preserves material from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age, and the Belverde Archaeological-Naturalistic Park, which includes the sites of the museum's main finds in a remarkable natural setting. The historic centre, with its concentric circles, is surrounded by fifteenth-century walls, with 3 doors and the houses that gather around the surviving tower of the medieval fortress. Also worth seeing are the Collegiata, with a fresco attributed to Pinturicchio, the church of San Michele Arcangelo, Piazza Garibaldi and, a few kilometres south of the centre, theformer convent of Santa Maria a Belverde, which three overlapping churches decorated with frescoes.

The countryside produces high quality products: wine, chianina meat, honey and above all oil, Dop Terre di Siena, whose flavour is enhanced raw on Tuscan dishes, from beans to "fettunta". Among the typical dishes, we point out the bico, somewhere between the Umbrian text cake and the Romagna piadina, and the pan dei Santi, an autumn dessert with an original flavour.