Italy Travel Tours

Your Italy Travel Tours can follow the path of a best-selling novel by American writer Frances Mayes.  Mayes is best known for her book Under the Tuscan Sun, an adventure of renewal and rebirth experienced in Tuscany after the author’s divorce from her husband.  Many Americans seek to retrace the steps taken by Mayes on this important period of her life.

Ask your tour guide to pick you up at your hotel in Florence and to drive you to Cortona which is a little city in central Italy, high atop a hill overlooking Lake Trasimeno.  The walls of this ancient city are estimated to be 3,000 years old.

After a series of wars against Rome in 300 B.C., Cortona was destroyed and later rebuilt.  By the 14th century it became part of Tuscany and it gave birth to several Italian historical figures: Luca Signorelli the painter, Brother Elias- companion to St. Francis of Assisi, and Cardinal Egidio Boni.

Once you have absorbed the splendor and history of Cortona, it is time to explore Lake Trasimeno.  With a surface area of 79 miles, it is larger than Lake Como, though the latter is more famous.

Separated by hills from the Tiber River, the lake is ringed by bucolic little villages.  History buffs will delight in the ancient history of this body of water.  There was a Battle of Lake Trasimeno in 217 B.C.  that puzzles historians to this day.  They’re not certain exactly where it took place because the lake was larger at that time.

Legend has it that the golden chariot of Flaminio lies at the bottom of this very deep lake.  Don’t be disappointed if you can’t find the chariot on your trip.  The many olive groves and vineyards that dot the lake will enchant you and provide beautiful photo opportunities on your vacation with Italy Travel Tours.

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