Orvieto it's

Of course. Many, even abroad, will know of Orvieto classico, of Orvieto secco and abboccato, DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) which means only grapes from specific areas were used to make these wines. A light golden fragrant wine, made of a mixture of grapes: Trebbiano Toscano, Verdello, Druppeggio, Sacchetto, Malvasia Toscana. Throughout the centuries the wine of Orvieto, ranging from 11° to 12°, and with a delicate bouquet, has been appreciated by the artist who helped ambellish the city (Signorelli for instance had over a thousand liters a years as part of his contract) and by popes, as well as the Orvietani themselves. The yearly production is now about 150,000 hectoliters, sold both at home and abroad, and there are innumerable places to buy it, either by the bottle or by the case (winw cooperatives, specialized producers, enoteques or wine libraries, shops). Frequently the wine may also be sampled.

Likened to a peacock, to a wedding cake, it has been called the finest example of Gothic in Italy. the foundation stone was laid in 1290 and by 1320 Maitani's reliefs on the facade were in place. Like many other Gothic cathedrals in Europe, it has recently celebrated its 700th birthday. An idea of what must have been like during the building is provided by Norton's list of contributions for the first yera: "Altogether the contributions recordere for this year from towns and barons amount to 731 puonds of wax, 24 markes, 29 horses, 3,858 loads of grain, and bravia (hangings or drapes in precious fabries) worth 84 gold pieces....The gifts of horses must have been of special value, from the fact that materials for building were all to be brought from a distance, and to be carried up the difficult ascent to the very crest of the mountain of Orvieto." unique for its glittering mosaic gold and marble facade, the cathedral also contains many other works of art, including thr famous frescoes in the Chapel of San Brizio where Luca Signorelli of Cortona worked for five years (1499-1504) on his Last Judgement, and where his nudes of the Damned and the Elect bear witness to the fascination anatomy held for artists of the time. The two are in a sense inseparable: Orvieto and its Cathedral, or if you like, the Cathedral and Orvieto.

In the nineteenth century, Geroge Dennis, English ambassador who was travelling through the central park of Italy studying Etruscan antiquities, said of Orvieto that the two lions were its cathedral and its well of St. Patrizio. The concept of a well in itself means water. and in Orvieto. this ideal fortress city, water was essential for the inhabitants in case of siege. But St. Patrick's well is more than this, for it mirrors the fascination of the human race with architectural structures, Built rather like a seashell with its double spiral staircase, a tower sunk into the ground, it impressed most 19th-century travellers more even than the cathedral. About 62 meters deep, with 248 steps to Sack of Rome by the troops of Charles V in 1527 and decided it would be best to have a well built to supply his fortress with water. His architect, Antonio da San Gallo the Younger, saw to the design. Building proceeded at a goodly rate, first through the tuff and the through layers of clay, and it was terminated in 1537 under Paul III. And the name? St. Patrick in Ireland also had a deep grotto where he went to meditate, a grotto which was likened to Purgatory, and so somehow in the nineteenth century this well, which up to then had been known as the Pozzo della Rocca (Fortress), got its present name. To be noted is that Carles V never did lay siege to the city and the water from the great well never slaked the thirst of the in habitants of Orvieto.

That's it's called in Italian. La Rupe. And it is jast that. A crag rising over the plain, formed about 100,000 years ago by an enormous volcanic eruptionwhen strata of tuff (or tufo, formed of volcanic detritus) laced with veins of pozzolana (siliceous material that reacts chemically with slaked lime in the presence of moisture to form cement) were laid down. Weather and rivers midst of the valley was the enormous crag.

That's what it was called in an American magazine article (GEO, January 1982) after landslip in 1978 had set off the alarm, with a big chunk of the cliff detaching from the rock no more than 300 meters from the Cathedral. Part of the problem depends on the fact that this emormous rock of soft friable tuff rests on a layer of clay and is therefore basically unstable. As time passes, the outer strata have a tendency to open out and peel off like the outer leaves of an artichoke. Orvieto with its wealth of treasures in the fields of archaeology history, art and landscape, had to be saved.Once the campaign had been launched, the government, with unusual speed, set aside 6,000,000 of old lire (law 25-5-1978 n.230) for consolidating the cliff. This meant first of all letting in long tie-rods to anchor the outer layers and redoing the whole sewage and aqueduct systems, which still dated in part to the nineteenth century. Equipment for monitoring movement of the rock were installed at the base and around the perimeter of the cliff. Over a third of the network of caves and grottoes and galleries in the rock itself, one might say the bowels of the city, were surveyed, photographed and mapped. The accusing finger was also pointed at traffic circulation on the pleteau, leading to the development of a plain, called "Mobilità Alternativa", to regulate cars and traffic. The old water-run funicular, originally inaugurated in 1988, Which brought passengers from the railroad station to the top of the cliff was renovated. Now run by electricity, it is over 577 meters long with an average slope of 27.86% and it takes less than two minutes to rise 156 meters from down below to up above. Parking were projected - one downat the station, the other recently terminated at the Campo Boario just outside Porta Romana (the city gate of the road leading to Rome and dating to the nineteenth century).

The concern with the cliff also led to a concern with the city itself and its monuments, in particular the churches and other buildings. Orvieto sometimes looks like one of Italo Calvino's imaginary cities where everything seems constantly in construction, in restoration. Take the scaffolding down in one street, and up it goes on another. "why is this building going on so endlessly?" "So that the city will not begin to fall to pieces". Buildings involved in restoration included first of all cathedral itself - the Signorelli frescoes, the lovely Madonna Enthroned by Gentile di Fabriano, the apse and its stained-glass windows; then the church of St. Andrea which stands on top of a fascinating palimpsest of Etruscan, Roman and Early Christian remains, the former churches of the Santi Apostoli and of the Carmine (now a fine auditorium), and S. Agostin and private buildings everywhere. The Theater, a striking nineteenth century interior, in which preview performances were frequently given, has finally raised its curtain once more in all its splendor after restoration works that seemed endless, and Orvieto is again a theater town. But perhaps the star example of restoration is the splendid thirteenth century Palazzo del Popolo, where the Etruscan and medieval remains brought to light in the foundations during restoration now stand side by side with the technical faciities of a modern Convention Center.

Thanks to the restoration of the Palazzo del Popolo, the building can now be used as originally convention center has a main assembly hall capable of seating 400, booths, for simultaneous translation, exhbition facilities, smaller rooms for conferences and lectures, and all planed with a view to eliminating architectural barriers.

Still one more aspect of Orvieto which makes the city unique is the presence of a true labyrinth of cavities, galleries, shafts, wells, cisterns and quarries running along beneath the streets and houses. Almost 3000 years of history are documented in these man-made cavities, which brought water to the city from the source below the rock, preserved the water that came from the sky in enormous cisterns, as well as providing construction material for the houses on top of the rock, as well as jobs and working areas . Years of study by a group of speleologists has "brought to light" small fragments of Velzna, the Etruscan city, hidden in the dark bowels of the rock. Qualified guides are now available to take the visitor on a tour through a small part of this underground "city" (leaving daily from the Tourist Bureau - in Piazza Duomo - at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.), where the traces left by the ancient in habitants can still be seen and the faint echoes of the generations of Orvietani who worked here the streets still seem to fill the air.

The first settlement to stand upon this crag that could be called a city, was Velzna, one of the most important centers of the Etruscan confederation, which managed to hold out against Rome until 264 B.C., when she was forced to surrender after a two-year's siege. What is left ofVelzna? the remains of the Temple of Belvedere, near St. Patrick's well, the city of the dead - Crocefisso del Tufo - on the north side of the cliff where the tombs are laid out in city blocks, the sanctuary-necropolis of Cannicella on the south side, from which came the famous Venus of Cannicella, an archaic maeble figure of a nude woman (who seems originally to have been a male, a kouros). Many remains of Velzna are hidden underground and can be discovered in the subterranean labyrinththat runs along below the streetsof Orvieto. Archaeological investigation carried out by the Superintendency of Antiquities, the Region of Umbria and the University of Perugia, continue to provide new information on these ancient inhabitants. We know, for instance, that the Etruscan inhabitants were relativelydemocratic, middle class, unlike Tarquinia where power rested with the nobility, and that they had built a powerful city up here on the rock.

Old City. This was medieval Orvieto, a beehive of political and religious activity, where the whole populace helped build the glorious cathedral, financed by real estate taxes (the first cadaster or land survey records date to 1292) and legacies (which abounded in times of plague of which there where recurrents bouts through the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). The territory of Orvieto stretched from the Tiber to Monte Argentario and many of the fine palaces built then still bear witness to this past, including the town hall, the papal palace (many were the popes who set up their headquarters here for Orvieto seemed to them much safer than Rome), the Palazzo del Popolo for the military authority and assemblies, the Palazzo dei Sette for the seven rapresentatives of the guilds. Butit was also a town characterized by clashes between the Guelph (or Papal) factions and the Ghibellines who sided with the emperor. At the height of this feuding, 4000 lay dead after three days' fighting and three hundred 'enemy' houses had been razed to the ground.

The site of a miracle - well almost. The miracle itself took place in Bolsena, about fifteen kilometers distant, but the linen altar cloth involved is in Orvieto in the Chapel of the Corporal in the Cathedral. When a doubting priest, in 1264, said mass in Bolsena, drops of blood fell from the wafer as he broke it, and he promptly was convinced that Christ was present in flesh and blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Pope Urban IV was in Orvieto then and it was from here that he proclaimed the feast of Corpus Christi and had St. Thomas Aquinas write the services. Pilgrims often come to Orvieto to pray silently before this miraculous cloth which is also taken in procession through the streets on the day of Corpus Christi. The whole event is clearly depicted in the paintings on the right-hand wall of the Chapel of the Corporal. And to the left is the marvellous silver-gilt and enamel reliquary originally made to house the cloth in 1337 by Ugolino di Vieri, a Sienese goldsmith.