While Tuscany is justifiably famous for its many fine hill towns, Umbria, just to the south, has some stellar offerings of its own. If you are after views, wine, and charming villages, you’ll find Umbria’s best in Orvieto.
Sitting majestically on its tufo throne a thousand feet above the valley floor, the city’s stone streets are a delight to explore. With its brown stone cityscape, atmospheric covered alleys, and well-tended flowerpots, Orvieto is a photographer’s dream. Every side street is a still life. The cathedral provides a great sightseeing experience: detailed scenes carved into its outer columns and a priceless chapel slathered in colorful art by Renaissance big shots Luca Signorelli and Fra Angelico.
Orvieto also provides perhaps the easiest introduction to Umbria – the pastoral region that all too often gets overshadowed by neighboring Tuscany. Orvieto’s many excellent restaurants serve up toothsome pastas, flavorful game, and pungent truffles.
Orvieto has three claims to fame: cathedral, Classico wine, and ceramics. Drinking a shot of the local white wine in a ceramic cup as you gaze up at the cathedral lets you experience Orvieto’s three C’s all at once.
We start in the Piazza in front of the Duomo (Church). Look at that attention-grabbing façade. Imagine how, as World War II raged around Orvieto, the fine reliefs gracing the front of the cathedral were encased in protective tufa walls. Orvieto and its cathedral were spared destruction, perhaps thanks to a “safe cities” designation by a Nazi general who appreciated the town – or one of its women. 😊
The Maurizio Tower was built in the 14th century and equipped with an early mechanized clock, originally used to keep track of workers time while building the cathedral.
The tower marks the start of Via del Duomo, lined with shops selling ceramics. The tradition of fine ceramics in Orvieto goes way back – the clay from the banks of the nearby Tiger is ideal for pottery. During the Renaissance, the town’s pottery was brightly painted and highly prized.
The Tower of the Moor marks the center of town, serves as a handy orientation tool, and is decorated by the coats of arms of past governors. Eighty such towers, each the pride and security of a powerful noble family, once decorated the town’s skyline. Today only a few survive. One can pay to climb it, but we didn’t.
This crossroads divides the town into four quarters (look for the Quartiere signs on the corners). In the past, residents of the four districts competed in a lively equestrian competition, parading all over town during the annual Corpus Domini celebration. Historically, the four streets led from here to four landmarks: Piazza del Popolo with its market and fine palazzo, St. Patrick’s Well, The Duomo and the City Hall.
The Palazzo del Popolo is built of local tufo, and is a textbook example of a fortified medieval public palace: a fortress designed to house the city’s leadership and military (built atop an Etruscan temple), with a market at its base, fancy meeting rooms upstairs, and aristocratic living quarters on the top level. We’re here on a Sunday – a lively market still bustles here Thursday and Saturday mornings, selling food, clothes, and household goods.
The Piazza della Repubblica, fronting the Church of Sant’Andrea, sits atop the Etruscan forum that was likely the birthplace of Orvieto, centuries before Christ. Inside the church is an interesting architectural progression: 11th-century Romanesque (with few frescoes surviving), Gothic (the pointy vaults over the altar), and a Renaissance barrel vault in the apse (behind the altar) – all dimly lit by alabaster windows.
On this spot, we can track a layer cake of history. Under the Christian church lie the remains of the Etruscan city, destroyed by the Romans. The ruins, currently accessible only with a tour, give you a sense of the history stacked beneath our feet throughout Orvieto.
While renovating their trattoria here in the oldest part of town, an Orvieto family discovered a vast underground network of Etruscan-era caves, wells, and tunnels. The excavation started in 1984 and continues until this day. The Well of the Quarry makes for a fun subterranean wander, keeping in mind that the whole city sits on top of a honeycomb of tunnels like these.
The friendly, noble Filippeschi family sometimes leaves their big green door open so visitors can peek into their classic medieval courtyard, with black travertine columns scavenged from nearby ancient Roman villas.
Across from the home, there is a viewpoint overlooking a commotion of faded red-tile roofs. This tradition goes back to Etruscan times, when such tiles were molded on a seated tile-maker’s thigh – wide to narrow. They nest so that water flows without leaking – handy for both rooftops and plumbing.
Everywhere you look one can notice faded frescoes on stucco walls, arches from previous iterations of buildings (left for structural and nostalgic reasons), built-in letter boxes, and the three local building stones – basalt white, black travertine, and brown tufa.
The fertility of the land (with its olives, vines, and fruit orchards) is clear. The manicured little forest of cypress trees marks the Orvieto cemetery. In the distance is Mount Cetona, guarding the south end of Tuscany.
This view is one of the best views of the natural fortification that made this town the choice of Etruscans before the rise of ancient Rome, of stability-starved peasants after the fall of Rome, and of several popes in the high Middle Ages. From this perch you can understand why the city was never taken by force.
