I was just looking through some of my old blog drafts (delete delete delete!)…drafts that never reached the publication stage for one reason or another. Among them I found one that I had written exactly ONE YEAR AGO…on December 1 2014. No kidding. I didn’t publish it at the time because one of our beloved cats became terribly ill soon thereafter (the kitty is fine now, by the way). And after that period of much worry, my Arezzo draft simply got pushed aside and forgotten…until today.
So this post refers to a day (in late November 2014) that Stefano and I spent in the lovely Tuscan city of Arezzo with some good friends of ours.
We had reserved afternoon tickets to visit the 15th century frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca inside the Basilica di San Francesco. Piero della Francesca was among the first early Renaissance painters to use perspective, which may not sound like much today but back then was a huuuuuge innovation.
The sequence of frescoes depicting the Legend of the True Cross is considered to be an early Renaissance masterpiece.
It deserves that title, in my opinion. Among other things, I was struck by the expressions of terror on the horses’ faces, which cannot be seen that well in that first photo…but I thought it was simply extraordinary…
Anyway, here are a few of the photos I took (no flash allowed, of course!). The two photos of the Piero della Francesca frescoes look a bit distorted because I was looking up at them. In other words, they weren’t at eye level…same problem with the church in the third photo. 
If you look closely at the photo of the façade of the church “Santa Maria della Pieve” (photo no. 3), you will notice that all the columns are different. One is even a statue. This is its most striking feature…so, when you visit Arezzo, make sure to have a good look at this façade.
By the way, if you click on some of the photos, you can make them bigger. The only photo that doesn’t do that for me is the second one. No idea why…
My last photo is of Piazza Grande, a stunning Medieval square with a sloping pavement in red brick. It used to be the main marketplace of Arezzo. The photo unfortunately gives only a partial view of it…
Anyway, even though this is hardly a recently-written post (!), I still hope you will enjoy it. 🙂