Last Thoughts on Orvieto

Choosing a place to spend two weeks when you have not been in the area before can be a hit and miss proposition. It turns out that in the Tuscany/Umbria area, it would be hard to make a mistake. Still, Orvieto turned out to be an excellent choice. We were able to make easy day trips to several other towns in the area including Lucca, Assisi, Gubbio and the resort town of Lake Bolsena. And Orvieto itself has a lot to offer. We spent several days just exploring the town itself without ever having a bother with finding something new to see.

Our home in Orvieto

The farm

Notice the new interchange being built.
It will save about 15 minutes travel time.

Orvieto Scalo, the new part of town

We chose to stay on a farm in Orvieto instead of in the city to get a different look at Italian life. Our choice turned out to be an excellent one as our hosts, Alessandra and Pierluigi, made sure we had the staples for cooking and brought us fresh eggs and fruits from their produce. They also had some great advice on things to do in the area. We never would have traveled to Gubbio or Todi without their recommendations. They have several chickens along with olive trees and a small vineyard and a large garden area. We were too late in the season to get anything other than a dozen cherry tomatoes from the garden, but we did get to see a bit of winemaking and olive harvesting in our time there. The little farm, really a hobby farm producing just enough for household use, was less than a mile from town, but we still chose to drive each time as it was all uphill and unlit at night making it not very safe for walking even during the day. Never mind the fact that you don’t want to get to town already tired from walking a mile uphill.

A modern crucifix

One of many street cafes

Inside another cafe where we had some excellent lasagna

St. George and the dragon

Building decoration

Advertisement for a woodworking shop

On our last day we also tried to visit an amazing engineering feat. In 1527, Pope Clement VII left Rome for Orvieto when Rome as sacked by the imperial army. He commissioned the building of a secure well so Orvieto would have a secure water supply in the very real possibility the Pope would have to seek refuge again in Orvieto. The well was a huge undertaking as it ultimately descended over 50 meters into the rock. Architect Antonio de Sangallo designed the well large enough for two spiral staircases, one for ascending and one for descending, with 248 steps each large enough for donkeys to carry the water. While windows were cut into walls to provide some light, the staircase is still gloomy and dank. The cost to go down into the well is €5 and there really isn’t much to see so we passed on the opportunity. It’s too bad they don’t offer a quick view for a small charge or even allow one to go down just a few steps to experience this amazing feat of engineering. Today, when faced with a daunting task, townspeople will say, “It’s like digging St. Patrick’s Well.” The name of the well comes from a resemblance to St. Patrick’s Cavern in Ireland.

The outer wall of St. Patrick's Well

Entrance to the park overlooking Orvieto Scalo

Etruscan Orvieto

Of special interest in Orvieto is its connection to the Etruscan past of the region. The Etruscan empire encompassed most of what is today Tuscany and parts of neighboring regions including Umbria. We were able to see several different examples of the Etruscan past, but Orvieto has three of the most interesting.

First, they have an excellent museum. As often happens, this museum came from the collections of a local merchant who had an interest in the past. Beginning in the mid-1800s, his first collections were unorganized items he gathered because he liked them, including what became a large and significant coin collection. Later as archaeologists became more insistent on provenance, he began to focus on items from Orvieto, particularly from the two necropolises beneath the town’s cliffs.

That is his hand stroking his beard

The museum houses the coin collections and an incredible set of artifacts. Of particular interest are the vases imported from Greece. The Mediterranean has long been a trading area so the fact that there was trade between Greeks and Etruscans should be no surprise. Still, it is exciting to see so many of these vases in almost pristine condition. The commentary in English was a pleasant surprise and it helped us learn about the changes in the styles of the vases over time and what that meant about the world of the time.

The panels rotate allowing us to see both sides

Closely connected to the museum are the two necropolises that have been excavated below the cliffs of the city. By the time archaeologists took control of the area, some of the area had been looted. However, many of the tombs were still uncovered so there was much to learn from what was left. Interestingly, we still are not able to read most of the Etruscan language. What little we have figured out comes from places like these necropolises so most of the understood words are related to death and burial leaving a great deal undeciphered.  

We were able to walk through the entire area of one of the necropolises and peer into the graves themselves. It was a bit eerie to know that once this had really been a city of the dead. The map showed over 250 different tombs. On another day, I walked part of the path around the town the city has built beneath the cliffs giving me a bird’s eye view of the necropolis and the door to what was a religious site hewn out of the cliff side. Today it is another Catholic church. It is seldom used and not open for viewing.

Today it is a Catholic Church, But there was an Etruscan temple here first.

On our last full day in Orvieto, we took the underground tour. The layer underneath the city is honeycombed with caves many of which were first dug by the Etruscans who lived there. These have been added to since and today are used for a variety of storage facilities. They are perfect for long-term wine storage. The city no longer allows any new construction and is working to shore up the existing caves so they don’t collapse under the weight of the buildings above them.

The red dots are the caves
The black lines are buildings above
No caves under the Duomo.
They were probably destroyed when building the foundations for the heavy cathedral.

Olive presses

We visited two of the more than 1200 caves. In one of these we saw a well dug by the Etruscans those many years ago. At a depth of over  40 meters, it is an amazing engineering feat. Barely large enough for a person, it was dug with hand tools and required a person to descend each time water was extracted from the well. We could see the footholds carved into the side of the well to allow a person to climb up and down like a ladder.

Another cave had something even more interesting: pigeon holes. During the Middle Ages, residents carved nesting holes for pigeons in caves on the edge of the cliffs. Not being stupid, the pigeons would flock to these holes for nesting which made them easy picking for the residents who looked at pigeon meat as an essential part of the diet. While the pigeons no longer use these particular holes for nesting, pigeons can still be found on restaurant menus around town. 

Orvieto

Orvieto is truly a hill town in Umbria, next to Tuscany. Built on top of a lonely butte, it is completely limited in size by the sheer cliffs that rise up to the top of the butte on each side. As a nice change from the other hill towns we have visited, this site is also basically flat. It does slope a bit, but there are none of those steep climbs one finds in most of these hill towns. Fortunately, one does not have to hike up to the town, either. There is minimal parking on the town level and one large parking lot somewhat below the town very close to our farmhouse. From there one can take the elevator or the escalator. We choose the elevator as the escalator only seems to work periodically and then may stop at any time even when it is working.

Our first day was partly cloudy with expected thunderstorms so we just walked from one end of town to the other enjoying the ambiance. The weather report suggested rain after 2:00 so we made sure to be home by then. This turned out to be the right move as the rain poured and the thunder roared for the rest of the afternoon. One bolt of lightning hit so close that it fried part of the internet connection. That was the only damage however so our electronics are still in good shape.

Representing one of the four Gospels

The next day dawned sunny and warmer so we spent most of the day visiting the Duomo at its attached museums. The Duomo is small but spectacular. It is too bad that the center section of the façade is under repair so we aren’t able to get the full effect of the statuary, mosaics and bronze doors that adorn the façade, but we are still able to get the right impression of its beauty. Some argue that it is the best façade in Italy.

The interior, warmly lit by the alabaster windows,  is somewhat sparsely decorated as the population decided to remove most of the statues to another location to un-Baroque the church in 1877. This adds to the spaciousness created by the architect who made the nave wider at the back than at the front making the space look longer than it is. This doesn’t mean that we are left devoid of some spectacular art however.  The pieta carved by Ipploito Scalza in 1579 was clearly inspired by Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome. The Chapel of San Brizio is filled by Luca Signorelli’s vivid scenes of the Day of Judgement. Filled with people each scene is worthy of its own study.

The artist adds himself

Note the devil in the ear of the antiChrist

Angels repelling the undeserving who try to get into heaven

Dante? I'm not sure, but he was represented here

The Chapel of the Corporal opposite has frescoes highlighting the story of the miracle that gives this Duomo its reason for being. In 1263, Peter of Prague, a priest skeptical that the bread used during communion actually transforms into the body of Christ was holding communion in the nearby lake city of Bolsena. As he held up the host to bless it, the bread began to bleed and run down his arm dripping onto the linen cloth covering the altar. The cloth was brought to Pope Urban IV who was visiting in Orvieto. He proclaimed a new holiday, Corpus Christi and the cathedral was built to display this miraculous cloth. For its own protection, the cloth is no longer on permanent display, but the fresco clearly shows the miracle.

Presenting the blood-stained linen to the Pope

The linen used to be displayed here

Our ticket to the Duomo included entrance into three other museums that were well worth the time. First we visited the Emelio Greco collection. Greco, a Sicilian artist, was chosen to create bronze doors in the 1950s to replace the rapidly deteriorating wooden ones. The small museum shows about 30 of his bronze nudes and many of his sketches and another bronze door. This modern museum includes a spiral staircase, the sole purpose of which is to allow the viewer a bird’s eye view of his works.

One of the bronze doors

A second museum housed in the rear of the church shows off the church’s art collection. The third is a single room where we had close and personal views of the 12 apostles whose statues were removed from the Duomo in 1877. We were much more excited to be able to see them up close than we would have had they still been in the nave of the church.

We did visit two other churches: Chiesa di San Lorenzo de Arari and Chiesa di San Giovanale.

On our drive back to our home, we decided to do a bit of exploring and ended up climbing a hill near the town which gave us some magnificent evening views of the town.

Church of St. John