CORTONA, a city of Italy, in the province of Arezzo, and about thirteen miles south of the city of that name, occupying the summit and slope of a steep hill that, from a height of 2000 feet above the sea, overlooks the fertile valley of the Chiana or Clanis. Its ancient fortifications, which are well preserved in almost their total circuit, present not only portions of Roman and mediaeval works, but magnificent specimens of the so-called Cyclopean architecture. The cathedral, a building of the 15 th century, but restored by Galilei in the 18th, contains a number of paintings by Luca Signorelli and Pietro Berettini, who were both natives of the town; the tomb of John Baptist Tommasi, the last grand-master of the Order of Malta; and a large sarcophagus, adorned with bas-reliefs of the Lapithae and Centaurs, in which, according to the fanciful hypothesis of the local antiquaries, were the remains of the Consul Flaminius, who perished in the battle of Lake Thrasymene against the Carthaginian invader. Among the other churches, which are almost all in possession of paintings of interest to connoisseurs, the most important is Santa Margherita, a fine building of the 13th century by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, which occupies the top of the hill and is embosomed in cypress trees. The Accadentia, Etrusca, founded by Ridolfino Venuti in 1726, has a museum in the palazzo ρretorio, which numbers amongst its various treasures a bronze candelabrum of sixteen lights, ranked among the finest specimens of Etruscan art. In the same building is preserved the Bonbucci Library, which contains a fine IMS. of Dante and a curious unpublished work called the Notti Coritane, or Nights of Cortona. Outside of the town is an Etruscan tomb of some architectural interest, known as the Grotto of ...