The sensational centrepiece of old Arezzo is the
canted Piazza Grande, surrounded by buildings from
different periods and lanes filled with goldsmiths’
workshops. The first time I came here it was winter,
the piazza was white with snow and the monthly
antiques fair was being held under the porticoes. The
second time it was late summer and the city’s popular
annual event, La Giostra del Saracino – the Joust
of the Saracen, a colourful affair in which mounted
knights tilt at the effigy of a Saracen – was being
contested in sweltering heat. Today it’s early spring
and, though the sun’s shining, the air is still chilly.
After a long morning on the trail, I have lunch
at a tiny osteria just off the piazza. All bottles and
boiseries, it takes its name, La Torre di Gnicche, from
a notorious 19th-century Aretine brigand. From the
very Tuscan menu, I choose a dish I’ve never eaten
before: i grifi, bits of calf’s head and cheek stewed with
tomatoes, chilli and red wine – pure cucina povera.
Scarlet red in colour and unctuously gelatinous in
consistency, it’s offal lovers’ heaven.
Owner Lucia Fioroni says an Australian tourist
once walked in and asked for the house speciality. She
served him i grifi, though not without qualms since
it’s an acquired taste, not for the squeamish. The man
polished it off with relish. “I’ve lived for 65 years in
vain,” he exclaimed, and promptly ordered seconds.
Fioroni says i grifi is made only within a 15-kilometre
radius of Arezzo, and that evening in Sansepolcro
I improvise a quick survey to check. Fioroni is right;
no one here knows what the dish is, not even a cook
I speak to, though its name gives her a clue. The word
“grifo”, she explains, means muzzle or snout in dialect.
Another pretty walled town, Città di Castello, is
just 10 kilometres from Sansepolcro, but it’s already
in Umbria. This is truffle country, as you can tell
from the menu at Trattoria Lea, the busy restaurant
I visit the next day. Here they shave truffles over virtually
everything, from tagliatelle to gnocchi, from frittata to
veal. I go for something different: mazzafegato, a salty
liver sausage, with paltone, a sort of fried rosemary-
flavoured potato cake – another couple of dishes that
would be unfamiliar to anyone outside the area.
The Pinacoteca, the municipal art gallery, is worth
a visit, with paintings by Raphael, born in nearby
Urbino, and Signorelli, a pupil of della Francesca’s.
Della Francesca himself never worked here, but he
would certainly have passed through on his way to
Perugia where, according to Vasari, “he did many
works that can still be seen”. Today only one remains:
the dazzlingPolyptych of Perugiain the Galleria
Nazionale dell’Umbria – and it takes only an hour
to get there on the E45 highway, which, like the
Tiber, ultimately leads to Rome.
Della Francesca wouldn’t recognise the northern
Umbrian landscape today. Now, a common crop is➤
La Torre di
Gnicche, Arezzo.
Below: gnocchi
withtrules
at Trattoria Lea,
Città di Castello.