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9:40 pm
It was another early morning as we headed out at 7:45 to Orvieto. Our plans were suppose to be to head to a winery in the afternoon for a little wine tasting but the plans feel through and we were left with an entire day in Orvieto. Since we had lots of time, Dr. Lees decided to stop in a little town called “Todi” which he had never been to but Esteban had recommended to grab a little breakfast and see the cathedral. Todi, go figure, is located at the top of a hill! Most of the time visitors have to take a little lift up to the top of the hill but the lift was broken so the bus we rented was permitted to drive us to the top. We grabbed some delicious breakfast of pastries and yummy Italian cappuccino and stopped in to see the cathedral which is currently being restored. This Romanesque cathedral had a gothic façade but still had a wooden roof! It was a simpler cathedral than some of the ones we had seen recently but there was another beautiful rendition of the last judgment above the doorway. Some of the iconography was
even borrowed directly from the Sistine chapel. It was a very beautiful cathedral and it was interesting to see the restoration work in progress.
Todi was also beautiful because there was a bunch of low-laying fog in the area and the whole town of Todi was above the cloud cover. We got a chance to look out over the countryside and see above the clouds which was gorgeous!
After Todi we headed to Orvieto, and the Orvieto Cathedral which is one of the most famous cathedrals in all of Italy. In fact, the façade of the Cathedral is on THE COVER of the textbook I just bought for my class in June over “Italian Medieval and Renaissance Art” 😊 The drive to Orvieto took us through some of the most BEAUTIFUL Italian countryside yet! We drove along the mountains at the edge of the Tiber river and it was gorgeous!
Orvieto sits on the top of a plateau of volcanic rock. The cliff faces of the plateau are a amazing terracotta color with a yellowish marbled stripes. We took a lift up the side of the plateau from the parking lot where our bus
left us. From there we took a quick city bus to the Orvieto Cathedral, or the “Duomo” as they call it.
Orvieto’s façade is the most gothic façade in all of Italy. Since Italy never got really big into gothic architecture like France, you don’t find much that is more gothic that Orvieto In Italy. The Church itself is really different for many reasons, one being that the whole building is built in black and grey stripes of bricks. The whole building inside and out are strips of grey and black, which sounds like it would be extremely distracting and detract from the other artwork but somehow it all works
The stained glass was the best that we’ve seen in churches so far. The rose window in particular was beautiful and had some really deep blue glass. The inside of the church was also black and grey striped everywhere. The Cathedral featured two side chapels, one that held the sacred relics of that the cathedral was built to protect and the other is called the “chapel of the last judgment”.
The Cathedral features two relics from a miracle at a place near Orvieto. It is said that
as a doubtful priest was blessing the host (communion bread) it suddenly started bleeding. The cathedral hosts both the alter cloth and the smaller cloth that were both stained with the blood from this miracle.
The Chapel of the Last Judgment almost steals the show from the beautiful façade of the Orvieto Duomo. The chapel is covered with frescos from various artists. On the ceiling is Jesus surrounded by choirs of angels on one side and the disciples on the other. On the sides of the chapel were different depictions of the end of time and the final judgment.
One fresco showed the chaos and turmoil left in the world as the apocalypse begins. In the front of the fresco, the antichrist is portrayed with the devil whispering in his ear and a group of people listening to him. Another shows demons flying through the sky, attacking people on earth. One shows a resurrection where skeletons are being resurrected from the ground by Angels blowing trumpets. Another fresco shows people being pulled down to purgatory. It features multicolored demons and tormented people being pulled into hell against their will. Across from that fresco, the contrast of Angel’s calling
people to heaven.
The series of frescos were so wonderful and full of emotion that it really left me speechless. My favorite part of the room was a small fresco beneath the series of the last judgment that depicted Mary holding the dead body of Jesus. The look of Mary’s face was so full of emotion it was as if she were saying “Oh… my son”. Mary Magdalene is also pictured holding Jesus’s hand up to her cheek as if she were trying to feel any remaining life left in his body. The emotion of those two grieving women portrayed so realistically in that fresco it really brought tears to my eyes (yes, I just went that cheesy). That chapel so far has been my favorite artwork (although Saint Francis’s was also really divine) .
After viewing the Duomo our group went on a tour of the man-made caves beneath the city streets of the Orvieto plateau. It is assumed that of first 20 meters of the plateau, 2/3 of it is hollowed out by various caves that people from the city have dung starting back in Etruscan times.
The Etruscans first started digging
to find water because, with as good of a fortification the plateau was, no water is found naturally on the plateau because of the volcanic rock that it is made of. One has to dig all the way to the bottom of the plateau to the level of clay that the surrounding countryside sits on to find water. So the Etruscans dug EXTREMELY deep wells in order to find water so that they could survive a siege of the city and not have to come down from the plateau to find water. In fact during our cave tour we saw a Etruscan well that was a square shape just large enough for a man to fit in. There were foot holes on either side of the well about every foot so a person could shimmy up and down the well. Historians still have NO idea how they managed to build wells so deep because they would never have been able to get enough oxygen to survive that deep! Even if they had had bellows to blow air deeper into the well for the diggers, they still would not have been able to get oxygen deep enough. It is one of
those ancient mysteries!
The caves were also built as a way to get more space on the plateau. Often times the caves were used as a place to work and then people would live above ground. We saw one chamber that was built by the Etruscans and used by people in the medieval times as a olive press for making olive oil.
One popular use for caves were the storage of pigeons. We got to see many of these “pigeon coops” that were dug right on the side of the plateau with an opening out of the side of the plateau where the pigeons would come and go. The coops had little square holes cut into the side of the walls and steps up to the owner’s home. People in Orvieto actually have some of these caves attached to their personal homes and they often use them for things like wine cellars. I suggested that it would be an excellent shoe closet. Pigeons were a good source of food in the case of siege because an army could not stop the Pigeons from flying in and out of their coops. We even saw one of those coops that
was used as a bomb shelter in WWII (although it wasn’t the smartest option for a bomb shelter).
The problem with these caves and the vast number of them is that the soft volcanic rock that makes up the whole plateau is prone to cave-ins and collapses. In fact the city now states that it is illegal for anyone to dig more or excavate any more underneath the city because of the danger of huge parts of the plateau collapsing off! They have also done a bunch of structural repairs and reinforcements of cracks and pillars inside existing caves to help prevent collapses. It has been 16 years since the last collapse and the city is hoping to slow down the erosion of the plateau if at least for a while.
After the really cool caves underneath Orvieto we headed out to explore the rest of the city. We grabbed lunch and gelato and headed to find an old Etruscan tomb necropolis. We hiked to the far side of the plateau where there was a ramping path down to the base of the plateau where the Etruscan tombs were. This necropolis was especially organized in a
town-like pattern. The stone tombs were built just like houses with stone paths in between the openings. We even got to crawl inside the tombs. Inside there were often stone benches where the urns would have been kept. The tombs were covered in green moss and were quite beautiful in an ancient ruins kinda way. We spent quite a bit of time poking around in the tombs and then we met the museum worker who spoke English quite good and had even been to Davenport, Iowa. He spoke to us about the Etruscan tombs and told us how Orvieto used to be a spiritual center and a pilgrimage site for the Etruscans much like Jerusalem or Mecca are for modern religions. He really enjoyed getting to practice his English and chatted with us for quite a long time. I can’t get over how friendly and welcoming a lot of the people here have been towards us!
After the Etruscan tombs we were running short on time so we hiked back UP the plateau and headed back to meet everyone at the Duomo. Amanda, Matt, and I decided we wanted to go into the tower at the center of
town so we booked it up all of those flights of stairs. We never should have let Matt lead with those long legs, we were REALLY out of breath at the end. We spent some time at the top looking out at Orvieto. But it was super windy and we still had to get back so we again booked it back down. We made it all the way through that tower in less than 20 minutes!
After meeting the group back at the Duomo we spent a little time watching the sun set on the façade of the Cathedral. The Duomo’s façade changes colors to this beautiful gold when the setting sun hits it. So at about 5:00 the sun started to hit it just right and the gold leaf in the mosaics on the façade started to sparkly amazingly! I tried to take some pictures but I don’t think they really could capture the fantastic color change!
We were meeting our bus driver back down the plateau at 6:00 so a group of us decided to head to a medieval well that was built with a double helix staircase that was near the lift that
we needed to take back down to our bus. So we hopped back on the bus made it to the well with about 30 minutes to spend. The well was REALLY deep. We started spirally down and down and down and down. Finally at the bottom you crossed a bridge and then went up the other staircase that makes the double helix. It was really cool, but a REALLY long way back up and after taking that tower up and down so fast my legs were REALLY burning. With all of the uphill walking we have been doing, we all are certainly going to have legs of STEEL!
After that we headed down the mountain on the lift and back to Perugia on the bus. It didn’t rain the whole day, except right as we got off the bus in Perugia it started to thunder, lightening, and downpour. We ran back in the pouring rain and got soaked. Go figure, we just can’t seem to get a day without rain here in Perugia!!! We grabbed supper, did a little internet time, and then headed to Lucy’s to celebrate Traci’s 21st birthday since we weren’t able to last night because of our early departure time this morning.
At Lucy’s we got to sit and chat with several Australians who are living at our hostel and some of the Italian students who go to the University of Perugia. Lucy was leaving in the morning to head on vacation to see her parent’s in the United Kingdom so we said goodbye. She has been SO gracious and wonderful to us, and she even gave Traci a slice of berry cheesecake and all of us glasses of Champagne on the house to celebrate her birthday. They really have been soooo welcoming to us! Matt gave them the UNI t-shirt he was wearing so it could get hung above the bar with the other college t-shirts (some of them from the US)
Tomorrow we are headed to several wineries for tours and wine tastings!
Later!
Katelyn
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Michelle
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Funny!
Omg I ove the picture of you climbing the Medieval Well steps!