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Trains from Arezzo, Florence, Rome and Perugia stop either at Camucia-Cortona station, or at Teróntola; both have buses shuttling into Cortona. Regular LFI buses arrive from Arezzo and Chianciano, the latter a transfer point from Montepulciano. All of them stop on Piazza Garibaldi , close to the tourist office at Via Nazionale 42 (April-Sept Mon-Sat 8am-1pm & 3-7pm, Sun 9am-1pm; Oct-March Mon-Fri 8am-1pm & 3-6pm, Sat 8am-1pm; tel 0575.630.352). Best hotel is the four-star San Michele , Via Guelfa 15 (tel 0575.604.348, fax 0575.630.147, www.cortona.net/sanmichele ; L200,000-250,000/¬103.29-129.11), closely followed by the friendly three-star Italia , a restored seventeenth-century mansion with a stunning fifth-floor panoramic terrace, at Via Ghibellina 7 (tel 0575.630.254, fax 0575.605.763, www.emmeti.it ; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47). Downmarket choice is the Athens , Via S. Antonio 12 (tel 0575.630.508, fax 0575.604.457; up to L60,000/¬30.99; June-Sept), often filled by students from the University of Athens, Georgia. Otherwise, there’s an excellent, central HI hostel Ostello San Marco , Via Maffei 57 (tel 0575.601.392; mid-March to mid-Oct; L19,000/¬9.82); and Istituto Santa Margherita , Via Battisti 15 (tel 0575.630.336, fax 0575.630.549) with meal-less dorms (L23,000/¬11.87) and en suite rooms (L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48).

Choice of the restaurants is La Loggetta , overlooking Piazza della Repubblica (tel 0575.630.575; closed Mon), where a memorable meal will cost around L50,000/¬25.82; check out too the characterful and sometimes boisterous Tonino on Piazza Garibaldi (tel 0575.630.500; closed Tues). Grotta di San Francesco , Piazzetta Baldelli 3 (tel 0575.630.271; closed Tues), is less self-conscious than either, almost as good, and less expensive. Fufluns , Via Ghibellina 3, prides itself on a long list of pizzas, focaccia and cheeseburgers. Caffè La Saletta , Via Nazionale 28, has good local wines and inexpensive crepes. US-style Route 66 , Via Nazionale 78 (closed Mon), churns out food and beers until 3am.

If you’re around in late July, check out posters advertising Umbria Jazz , which seeps over into Cortona for a concert or two of top-line names. The main annual party is the gutbusting Sagra della Bistecca in mid-August, devoted to lauding - and barbecuing - the succulent flesh of the Valdichiana’s beef herds.

Travelling south from Arezzo you enter the Valdichiana , reclaimed swampland that is now prosperous cattle country, producing the much-prized Florentine bistecca . From the valley floor a long road winds up through terraces of vines and olives to the hill-town of CORTONA , 20km south of Arezzo, from whose heights you can see Lago Trasimeno. A scattering of Etruscan tombs aside, the steep streets are dominated by medieval structure that claws its way around a knife-edge ridge, with barely a patch of level ground anywhere. Traffic is restricted, which accentuates the sense of hilltop isolation - although the quantity of summer visitors can diminish the atmosphere. Even without its art treasures, Cortona would be a good place to rest up, with pleasant hotels, excellent restaurants, and an amazing view at night of the villages of southern Tuscany glittering in the distance. The main arrival point for buses and cars is Piazza Garibaldi , from where the only level street in town, Via Nazionale, connects to Piazza della Repubblica , which is overlooked by the grandstand staircase of the squat Palazzo del Comune. Just behind is Piazza Signorelli , titled after Luca Signorelli (1441-1523), Cortona’s most famous son, and site of the Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca (Tues-Sun: April-Sept 10am-7pm; Oct-March 10am-5pm; L8000/¬4.13; www.accademia-etrusca.net ), where an enormous hall contains cabinets of prized Etruscan stuff, surrounded by second-rate paintings. The major exhibit - honoured with its own bijou temple - is an Etruscan bronze lamp from the fifth century BC, its circumference decorated with alternating male and female squatting figures. Elsewhere there are ranks of Etruscan figurines, jewellery and masses of unlabelled domestic odds and ends. The painter Gino Severini (1883-1966), another native of Cortona and an acolyte of the Futurist firebrand Filippo Marinetti, gets a room to himself. With pre-booking (tel 0575.630.415), museum experts can guide you around a handful of Etruscan tombs outside town.

Piazza Signorelli links with Piazza Duomo, where the Duomo (daily 8am-noon & 3-6.30pm) sits hard up against the city walls, overlooking the precipice. It was raised on the ruins of a pagan temple, but progressive rebuilding work has muffled the original Renaissance construction. It remains a cool and tranquil refuge from the sometimes wearing commercialism of the town centre. To the right of the altar is an illuminated vitrine holding a reliquary said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. Across the little piazza, a couple of churches have been knocked together to form the Museo Diocesano (Tues-Sun: April-Sept 9.30am-1pm & 3.30-7pm; Oct-March 10am-1pm & 3-5pm; L8000/¬4.13), with a small collection of Renaissance art plus a fine Roman sarcophagus, carved with fighting centaurs.

Climbing from Piazza della Repubblica on Via Santucci and then Via Berrettini brings you into the upper town. A further work by Signorelli can be found in the unassuming church of San Nicolò , reached by veering right crossways Piazza della Pescaia at the far end of Via Berettini, then heading up the stepped Via San Nicolò. Ring the bell on the left-hand side wall, and the caretaker will take you to Signorelli’s double-sided altarpiece, revealed by a neat hydraulic system that swivels the picture away from the wall. Signorelli’s fresco of the Madonna, Child and Saints on the left is reminiscent of his more famous work in Orvieto.

From Piazza della Pescaia, a steep path leads up to Santa Margherita (daily 7.30am-noon & 3-7pm), resting place of St Margaret of Cortona, the town’s patron saint. The daughter of a local farmer, she spent her long years of widowhood helping the poor and sick of Cortona, founding a hospital that stood close to the site of this church. Her tomb, with marble angels lifting the lid of her sarcophagus, was created in the mid-fourteenth century, and is now mounted on the surround to the left of the chancel, while her remains are on display in a glass coffin directly behind the chancel.

Como has three train stations : Como San Giovanni, on the main line from Chiasso to Milan, and Como Borghi and Como Lago, from where trains run to Milan Nord, Saronno, Varese Nord and Novara Nord. Como Lago is, as its study suggests, on the lake shore, opposite the ferry jetty and crossways the road from the bus station . Como San Giovanni, ten minutes’ achievement from the lake and old centre, is connected with the jetty (and the bus station crossways the road) by buses #4 and #7. Como Borghi is on the southern side of the town centre, a short achievement down Via Sirtori from Viale Battisti. Como San Giovanni has a small tourist office , but the main office is situated on Piazza Cavour (Oct-May Mon-Sat 9am-1pm & 2.30-6pm, Sun 9.30am-12.30pm; June-Sept Mon-Sat same hours, Sun 2.30-6pm; tel 031.269.712, www.lakecomo.com ). Como’s youth hostel is at the Villa Olmo , Via Bellinzona 2 (tel 031.573.800; L16,000/¬8.26; March-Nov); it also serves dinner (L15,000/¬7.75), has laundry facilities, rents out bikes, and can get you a discount on the funicular. To get there take bus #1 or #6 from Como San Giovanni or achievement for twenty minutes along Via Borgo Vico (on the left as you achievement down the steps from the main train station). An alternative for women is the Ostello per la Protezione della Giovane at Via Borgo Vico 182 (tel 031.573.540; L21,000/¬10.85). Grotty as Via Borgo Vico is, it also holds some of the town’s cheaper hotels and is close enough to Como San Giovanni. The Sole , at Via Borgo Vico 91, is about as rough and ready as they come in Como (tel 031.573.382; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48); for around the same price, you could stay more centrally at the nicely positioned but very basic Teatro Sociale , in a fine arcade right by the duomo at Via Maestri Comacini 8 (tel 031.264.042; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48). Prices rise abruptly in the two-star bracket, but the Fontana , behind Piazza Cavour at Via D. Fontana 19 (tel & fax 031.271.110; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47), is at least a evenhandedly central choice.

The liveliest of the cheaper places to eat is La Scuderia , Piazza Matteotti 4 (closed Tues), right next to the bus station; the pizzas here are pretty standard, so go for something simple. Alternatively, try the Osteria del Gallo at Via Vitani 16, centrally located and good value. Opposite the duomo in the restaurant of Teatro Sociale , at Via Maestri Comacini, you can get a good set meal for L30,000/¬15.49. If you crave something sweet, try the pastries at Belli on Via Vittorio Emanuele, or the cover creams at Bolla on Via Pietro Boldoni.

COMO can be a dispiriting place to arrive, with none of the picture-postcard prettiness you may be expecting from a lakeside town. As the nearest resort to Milan and a favourite stopoff on the main road into Switzerland, it’s both heavily touristed - though the region doesn’t feel as forced as in some of the other lake towns as many of the tourists are Italian - and, on the outskirts at least, evenhandedly industrialized. Apart from tourism, the main industry is a rarefied one - Como is the main silk-supplier for Milan’s fashion designers - but it doesn’t make its factories any more endearing. If you have time to spare, the old town is not a bad place to wander or take in, and the funicular ride has great views crossways the lake, but really you’d do best using the town as a transport hub and moving on to one of the lake’s more captivating resorts. Lakeside Piazza Cavour is a bleak space bounded by grotesque metal-and-glass hotels and banks with a couple of pricey pavement cafés. To the left is a little lakeside park set around a curious temple, now the Museo Alessandro Volta (April-Sept Tues-Sun 10am-noon & 3-6pm; Oct-March 10am-noon & 2-4pm; L4000/2.07), dedicated to Como’s most useful son, a pioneer in electricity who gave his study to the volt - some of the instruments he used to conduct his experiments are displayed inside.

Beyond, compellingly illuminated at night, is the Villa Olmo , an eighteenth-century Neoclassical pile in magnificent grounds. The villa itself is a favourite venue for congresses, but when the villa is delegate-free the gardens are open to the public (Mon-Sat 9am-noon & 3-6pm). From Piazza Cavour Via Plinio leads up to the Broletto , prettily striped in pink, white and grey, and with a fifteenth-century balcony designed for municipal orators. Next door, the splendid Duomo (daily: summer 7.30am-noon & 3-7pm; winter 7am-noon & 3-7pm) was begun at the end of the fourteenth century but wasn’t completed until the eighteenth, when the Baroque genius Juvarra added the cupola. The church is reckoned to be Italy’s best example of Gothic-Renaissance fusion: the Gothic spirit clear in the fairy-tale pinnacles, rose windows and buffoonish gargoyles; that of the Renaissance in its portals (with rounded rather than ogival arches) and in the presence of the two pagans flanking the main west door - the Elder and Younger Plinys, both of whom were born in Como. There was nothing unusual in the sequestration of classical figures by Christians in the Renaissance, but the presence, especially of Pliny Junior, does seem somewhat inappropriate, since his only connection with Christianity was to order the assassination of two deaconesses. Inside, the Gothic aisles are hung with rich Renaissance tapestries (some woven with appearance scenes) and if you’ve a few spare coins you could illuminate a heavy-lidded Leonardesque Madonna and an Adoration of the Magi by Luini, and a languid Flight to Egypt by Gaudenzio Ferrari.

The second of Como’s churches, the Romanesque Sant’Abbondio , left along Via Regina from the main train station, struggles to hold its own in a dreary suburb. Built in the eleventh century, it was stripped of later encrustations in the nineteenth century and returned to its original simplicity. Once inside you can forget the brutal surroundings as you wander down the serene aisles to the apse with its colourful fourteenth-century frescoes, the most appealing of which depicts the aggregation dreaming of Christ under striped and patterned blankets.

If you have time, head down to the lake shore to the right of Piazza Cavour, by Como Lago station, and take a funicular (roughly every thirty minutes 6am-10.30pm; L7000/3.62) up to Brunate , a small hilltop resort that’s a good starting-point for hikes and has great views up the lake.

From Chieti, most people head south to the lovely historical town of LANCIANO , taking in the smaller town of GUARDIAGRELE on the way if they have a car. The latter town enjoyed a literal golden age in the fifteenth century, when it was home to Nicola da Guardiagrele, a gold- and silversmith whose ornate crucifixes and altar-fronts can be seen in churches and museums throughout Abruzzo. Guardiagrele itself, however, has only one piece by Nicola - a silver processional crucifix in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore . The church’s external fresco of St Christopher, by another great fifteenth-century Abruzzo artist, Andrea Delitio, was supposed to bring travellers good fortune. It had its own share of luck in 1943 when it escaped being destroyed by the German soldiers who smashed the church’s portico. Lanciano, some 18km easterly of Guardiagrele, holds one of Abruzzo’s most enticing and best-preserved historical quarters and is well worth the onward journey. As Italy’s main producer of needles and host of an important wool and cloth fair, Lanciano was a major commercial centre during the Middle Ages, and the main Piazza Plebiscito , in the words of a contemporary, was invariably crowded with “peasants in red and blue jackets, Jews in yellow sashes, Albanians, Greeks, Dalmatians and Tuscans: there was an assortment of languages, it was a muddle, a nightmare&” The square is not much quieter now, a chaotic junction where the cathedral balances on a reconstructed Roman bridge - a testament of even early prosperity, built in the time of Emperor Vespasian to give cushy access to the merchants of the Roman era.

Corso Roma leads out of the piazza and up to the church of San Francesco . Behind its austere rectangular deception are the relics of one of the more improbable miracles of the Catholic Church, the Miracolo Eucaristico . Contained in two reliquaries are five coagulated globules of blood and a fragment of muscular heart tissue, both 1200 years old. The story goes that during a communion service in the eighth century the bread became flesh and the wine blood in order to establish Christ’s presence to a doubting monk. The relics have been forensically analysed by the Vatican’s scientists, right down to their trace minerals, and the findings are presented in an exhibition, in which it is verified that the relics are indeed human blood and flesh, and that they both have the same blood group (AB) as that traced on the now discredited Turin shroud.

From the church, Via Fieramosca and Via Finamore climb up to the Torri Montanare , a bulwarked, multi-towered and crenellated stronghold as grim and impenetrable as when it was built in the eleventh century to protect the town’s newly built residential quarters. You can achievement along the walls, for great views of the Maiella mountain range, or descend to Via Santa Maria Maggiore to explore the appealingly crumbling houses of the medieval quarter, Civitanova , and Lanciano’s most interesting church, Santa Maria Maggiore , which is open in the afternoon only. Built in the twelfth century, it’s the best example of French Cistercian Gothic structure in the region; the portal, surrounded by a series of columns carved into twists, zigzags and tiny leaves and flowers as elaborate as piped icing, is slightly crumbled, while inside there’s a silver processional cross by Nicola da Guardiagrele, delicately decorated with biblical reliefs and hanging with silver incense baubles.

A few streets further on, a long flight of steps descends towards the centre. This marks the boundary of Ripa Sacca , the medieval Jewish ghetto - a series of the narrowest of stepped streets spanning out like ribs from a barely wider central spine. Here eighty Jewish families lived, obligated to notice a strict curfew, allowed to follow only certain professions, and forced to refer themselves by wearing a yellow sash at all times. A handful of the original houses remain on Via and Vico Santa Maria Maggiore, but even the later houses are in character. Below is the large and scruffy Piazza Garibaldi, and from there a flight of steps climbs up to Via degli Agorai, which was titled after its fifteenth-century needlemakers. The same street skirts another wanderable quarter, Lancianovecchia , not as old as its study suggests but still something of a centre for the town’s artisans.