Casa San Marco

Casa San Marco was purchased by its current owners in 2002 and restored over twenty years through collaboration with local Cortona artists, artisans, and tradesmen. The home occupies the upper two floors of a 16th-century palazzo, built in its day for one of Cortona’s prominent noble families.

Beyond the wrought iron railing of Casa San Marco’s centerpiece—its tremendous balcony—emerges a staggering panoramic view of Cortona and the surrounding lands. Beginning in the foreground with the massive medieval bell tower which rises up from the nearby Church of San Francesco, one’s gaze drifts over Cortona’s stacked terra cotta rooftops, passes its terraced olive groves, and continues downward, settling upon the shores of the legendary Lake Trasimeno in the Val di Chiana before being lifted, further in the distance, by the rocketing slopes of the Apennine Mountains, whose purple peaks, each dawn and dusk, evaporate into mist under the coral haze of the central Italian sky.

The design and furnishings of Casa San Marco take inspiration from the owners’ great affinity for rare antiques, European interior design, and renaissance architecture. The result is an unparalleled space that incorporates modern and 20th-century elements all the while paying continual homage to the home’s more than five-hundred-year heritage.