The prevailing character of Cortona’s architecture is medieval with steep narrow streets situated on a hillside (altitude 600 metres), embracing a view of the whole of the Valdichiana. From the Piazza Garibaldi is a fine prospect of Lago Trasimeno, scene of Hannibal's ambush of the Roman army in 217 BC (Battle of Lake Trasimene). Parts of the Etruscan city wall can still be seen today as the basis of the present wall.
Inside the Palazzo Casali is the Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca that displays items from Etruscan, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations, as well as art and artefacts from the Medieval and Renaissance eras. The distinguished Etruscan Academy Museum had its foundation in 1727 with the collections and library of Onofrio Baldelli. Among its most famous ancient artefacts is the bronze lampedario or Etruscan hanging lamp, found at Fratta near Cortona in 1840 and then acquired by the Academy for the large sum of 1600 Florentine scudi. Its iconography includes (under the 18 burners) alternating figures of Silenus playing panpipes or double flutes, and of sirens or harpies. Within zones representing waves, dolphins and fiercer sea-creatures is a gorgon-like face with protruding tongue. Between each burner is a modelled horned head of Achelous. It is supposed that the lampedario derived from some important north Etruscan religious shrine of around the second half of the fourth century BC. A later (2nd century BC) inscription shows it was rededicated for votive purposes (tinscvil) by the Musni family at that time (P. Bruschetti et al., Il Museo dell'Accademia Etrusca di Cortona, Catalogo (2nd Ediz., Calosci, Cortona 1996). The Museum contains several other important Etruscan bronzes.
Etruscan chamber-tombs nearby include the 'Tanella di Pitagora' (halfway up the hill from Camucia), two at the foot of the hillside at Il Sodo, and a complex in Camucia. Il Sodo I contains pitch-roofed chambers of slab construction with an inscription, and can be visited. Il Sodo II contained a stone stepped platform with carved sphinxes devouring warriors, the originals in Arezzo Museum (1998). (see La Cortona dei Principes, ed P.Z. Grassi, Cortona 1992)
The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie by Francesco di Giorgio Martini.The town's chief artistic treasures are two panels by Fra Angelico in the Diocesan Museum, an Annunciation and a Madonna and Child with Saints. A third surviving work by the same artist is the fresco above the entrance to the church of San Domenico, likewise painted during his stay at Cortona in 1436. [1],[2]. The Diocesan Museum houses also a group of work by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, known as Lo Spagnuolo, called Ecstasy of St. Margaret. The Academy Museum includes the very well-known painting Maternità of 1916 by the Cortonese artist Gino Severini. There are also examples of the works of Pietro Berrettini (1596-1669), called Pietro da Cortona, pupil of Andrea Commodi.
Also noteworthy is the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, designed by Francesco di Giorgio Martini.