What is Cetona known for?

Marchese Chiappino Vitelli bought the town from Cosimo I in 1556 and reshaped it around the Renaissance Piazza Garibaldi at the foot of the medieval grid. 1,148-meter ridge above the borgo, dividing the Val d'Orcia from the Val di Chiana, with Paleolithic caves on the southwestern flank. Cave complex on Monte Cetona with Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age occupation, and a hermitage with Cola Petruccioli frescoes nearby.

Cetona is a comune in the province of Siena, Tuscany region of Italy, about 62 kilometers from Perugia.

Tuscany · Siena

Cetona

A medieval borgobelow Monte Cetona, sold by Cosimo I to the Vitelli in 1556 and the centro storico still shaped by their fortress reconstruction.

62 km / 39 mi

Nearest hub (Perugia)

2,488

Population

Apr–Oct

Best time to visit

Recognised as

Why come

Cetona sitson the western flank of Monte Cetona, the 1,148-meter ridge that separates the Val d'Orcia from the Val di Chiana at the meeting point of Toscana, Umbria and Lazio. Paleolithic and Neolithic finds in the Belverde caves on the mountain confirm continuous human use since the Mesolithic. The medieval comune was alternatingly ruled by Siena, Orvieto and Perugia before passing to Siena in the late fourteenth century. In 1556, Cosimo I de' Medici sold the town to Marchese Chiappino Vitelli, who turned the medieval fortress at the top of the borgo into a private residence and laid out the elegant Piazza Garibaldi below. That Renaissance urban gesture, a flat civic stage at the foot of a steep medieval grid, is what most visitors notice first. The Convento di San Francesco has stood since 1212 and the Eremo di Santa Maria a Belverde, in the woods above the town, holds fourteenth-century frescoes by Cola Petruccioli of Orvieto.

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Gallery

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Known for

Piazza Garibaldi
Sixteenth-century elliptical square laid out by Chiappino Vitelli at the foot of the medieval grid, the civic stage of the borgo.
Rocca di Cetona
Medieval fortress at the top of the centro storico, converted to a private Vitelli residence in 1556, with surviving walls and the keep.
Convento di San Francesco
Franciscan convent founded in 1212 below the borgo, with a single-nave church and a small cloister still in religious use.
Eremo di Santa Maria a Belverde
Fourteenth-century hermitage in the woods on Monte Cetona, with frescoes by Cola Petruccioli of Orvieto, accessible by a marked path.
Grotte di Belverde
Paleolithic and Bronze Age cave complex on Monte Cetona, documented since the Mesolithic, open seasonally with guided tours.

When to visit

Best months · Apr–Oct

Best
Hot or crowded
Quiet
Mostly closed

April through June and September into October are the months Cetona keeps its calmest pace, the wooded slopes of Monte Cetona green or rust depending on the half. July and August are hot in the centro storico but the mountain trails above 800 meters stay cool. The Mostra del Tartufo, dedicated to the local white truffles, runs the second weekend of November in Piazza Garibaldi. November through March is quiet, most trattorie open only on weekends, and the Eremo di Belverde in winter mist, half-hidden under the travertine cliff, is the photograph the borgo's photographers most keep coming back for.