Cortona on the Move turns its lens on Italy's 'Beautiful Country'

Cortona on the Move 2026, the international photography festival held in the Tuscan hill town, has opened under the title 'Beautiful Country,' the Guardian reports. The festival brings together more than 30 exhibitions that explore Italy 'in all its complexity,' mixing the spirit of the aristocratic grand tour with the depth of contemporary documentary photography.

The title is a deliberate echo of the way Italy has long been seen from abroad. Cortona itself belongs to that history: a hill town on the old route between Rome and Florence, it was the kind of place foreign travellers stopped to sketch and to measure against the classical past. To call the country 'beautiful' now is to raise the question of who is looking, and at what.

The documentary side of the programme answers that question with work shaped by reportage rather than picturesque conventions. That the Guardian presents the festival as a photo gallery, rather than a critical essay, is itself a sign of how such events travel: through images.