Apr 13
Orvieto
This will be part I of the “our trip down south” series, which will probably take forever for me to finish, since we had so much fun and took so many darn pictures. I promise it will be fascinating, though - especially if, like most people, you’re fascinated by looking at other people’s vacation pictures. :)
On our way down to Positano, we stopped at a little medieval town called Orvieto, which was quite beautiful. Like a lot of the towns in that area, Orvieto is perched rather precariously on the top of a large cliff and surrounded by some highly serious (and seriously high) city walls. I had a great time being juvenile - as usual - and imagining the cauldrons of boiling oil being prepared at the tops of the walls and the unfortunate people below somehow not seeing it coming. For some reason that I can’t quite explain, I think that boiling oil, in the medieval sense, is really, really funny. In any case, we got into the city just fine but quickly found that the modern fortifications involve roads that are completely nuts and a total lack of street signs. This was my first time driving outside of the US, and cruising around completely lost in a city that looks like it hasn’t changed at all since the 1200s didn’t quite compute. In any case, we finally found our hotel, and even a parking space around the corner with only minor losses to the local population. Here’s a picture of me dreaming of boiling oil and of the surrounding valley from the edge of town.
Once we settled into the hotel, it took us about 15 minutes to figure out why the room was available and relatively cheap…. because there was a clock tower outside that went off every 15 minutes, all night long. Each time it rang once for each hour, and then with a separate bell once for every 15 minutes past the hour. Luckily we were tired from driving, and it wasn’t much of a problem. Here’s a picture of the beautiful/evil thing from our window.
We only had a few hours the next day to visit the town because we needed to get back in the car to head down to Positano, but it worked out just fine because it was quite small. Aside from the general beauty of the town, Orvieto seems to be best known for the huge cathedral there that hangs over the edge of the cliff. There’s a funny story about the building of the thing… apparently a priest came to town and expressed his doubts about transubstantiation to some people there. Later on, he was giving mass when blood started to spontaneously pour out of some part of the church onto a linen cloth. It sounds fishy to me, but the Pope was so excited to hear about it that he ordered them to build a massive church and a shrine for the cloth. Here’s a picture…
In addition to that church, there were a number of other, older ones in town. Here’s a picture of one that was built in the 10th century.
Another interesting thing about Orvieto is that there’s quite a network of caves dug underneath it that has been expanded and used for all sorts of purposes over the years. We toured some of the caves that were used as everything from a bathroom to a grave to a wine cellar that, among other things, made us quite happy not to have had any wine there. There was also an incredibly deep well in the caves, that was apparently put out of service when the water started to taste bad because somebody threw some French people down there. No lie. Here are a final few pictures from around town and of some local Etruscan finds we saw at the museum.
