Get FREE email communications from Fodor's Travel, covering must-see travel destinations, expert trip planning advice, and travel inspiration to fuel your passion.
Sitting on a low hill in a wide plain, Arezzo, especially the bell tower of its Duomo, is visible from afar. Surrounding the older town is an area of urban sprawl. As you begin to walk along the narrow pedestrian streets inside the walls, however, the standard stores of the lower town are gradually replaced by the exclusive antiques and jewelry shops for which Arezzo is known, and the anonymous buildings of the new town give way to Renaissance town palaces, Romanesque and Gothic churches, and the medieval squares of the upper town—all of which is crowned, quite naturally, by the Duomo itself.
The famous Piero della Francesca frescoes depicting The Legend of the True Cross (1452–66) were executed on the three walls of the Capella Bacci, the apse of this 14th-century church. What Sir Kenneth Clark called "the most perfect morning light in all Renaissance painting" may be seen in the lowest section of the right wall, where the troops of Emperor Maxentius flee before the sign of the cross. Reservations are required and can be made online.
