There are days when the weather refuses to cooperate with your travel plans.
And then there are days when the weather seems personally offended that you left the house.
Our day trip from Florence to Orvieto fell firmly into the second category.
The forecast had called for thunderstorms, but we decided to go anyway. We already had tickets for the Orvieto Underground tour, and after changing plans enough times on this trip, a little rain wasn’t going to stop us.
As it turned out, “a little rain” was optimistic.
We got thunderstorms, sheets of rain and periods of absolute torrential downpour.
And somehow, it ended up being one of the most fun day trips we’ve done.
The City on the Rock
Orvieto is in Umbria, south of Florence, and from a distance it looks almost impossible.
The old city sits high on top of a massive plateau of volcanic tufa, with steep cliffs dropping into the green countryside below. It is one of those places where you immediately understand why somebody thousands of years ago looked at the landscape and thought, Yep. We should build up there.
The settlement that eventually became Orvieto was an important Etruscan city, usually identified with Velzna. The Romans conquered it in 264 BC, but the cliff continued to be occupied and developed through the medieval period. The modern name is generally thought to have evolved from the Latin Urbs Vetus, meaning “Old City.”
Getting from the modern train station below to the historic centre would normally involve Orvieto’s funicular.
Naturally, the funicular wasn’t running.
We had actually been looking forward to it, because apparently we now consider unusual forms of public transportation a legitimate tourist attraction. Instead, a replacement shuttle took us up the hill.
Not quite as exciting.
Still effective.
By the time we reached the top, the sky was already looking increasingly threatening.
The views, though, were incredible.
Rolling Umbrian hills stretched away in every direction, broken up by olive groves, vineyards, cypress trees and little clusters of buildings. In the distance, curtains of rain were visibly moving through the valley.
We had enough time to admire them before eventually becoming part of them.
Orvieto Underground
The main reason we came to Orvieto was actually beneath the city.
Under the streets, churches and houses is an enormous man-made underground world that has been developing for roughly 2,500 years.
More than 1,200 caves, tunnels, wells, cisterns and chambers have been documented inside the cliff. They weren’t created as one giant underground city. Instead, successive generations kept carving new spaces into the relatively workable volcanic rock whenever they needed something.
So going underground is basically like walking through layers of Orvieto’s history.
The Etruscans were among the earliest people to dig into the rock, particularly in search of water. Being perched on top of a virtually impregnable cliff was fantastic for defence, but considerably less useful if everyone died of thirst during a siege.
They dug narrow shafts, cisterns and tunnels into the rock to reach and manage water supplies. Some of the underground cisterns date back to the Etruscan period.
Later generations found plenty of other uses for the spaces.
One chamber contains the remains of an entire medieval olive oil mill.
And not just a symbolic grindstone sitting in the corner.
There are millstones, presses, channels, storage areas and evidence of the equipment used to process olives underground.
It makes sense when you think about it. Underground, the temperature is more stable and there is no need to devote valuable space on top of the cliff to an industrial operation.
But one of the strangest rooms is covered in hundreds upon hundreds of small square holes.
At first glance, it looks like some sort of ancient storage system.
They were actually pigeon holes.
Orvieto’s residents carved entire underground dovecotes, or colombari, into chambers near the outer edge of the cliff. Pigeons could fly out to feed in the surrounding countryside and return to the caves, where they were raised as a reliable source of food.
Pigeon is still part of the traditional cuisine of the area. Which we didn’t try….
It is one of those wonderfully practical bits of history that rarely survives in monumental buildings.
Cathedrals tell you what people believed.
Palaces tell you who had money.
Hundreds of pigeon cubbies carved into a wall tell you what people actually did when they needed dinner.
And Then the Sky Opened
Our underground tour lasted about an hour, which was conveniently enough time for the weather outside to completely lose its mind.
There had already been thunder and heavy rain, but at various points the storm turned into a proper torrential downpour.
Normally this would be the part of a day trip where everyone gets miserable.
Instead, we were having a blast.
There is something liberating about reaching the point where you are already wet enough that staying dry is no longer a realistic objective.
You stop carefully navigating puddles.
You stop hiding under every awning.
You accept your fate.
Orvieto’s narrow medieval lanes also look fantastic in the rain. The dark volcanic stone, wet cobbles, old archways and little passages suddenly felt even older.
We wandered.
We hid when the rain became ridiculous.
We wandered some more.
And every now and then the weather eased long enough for the clouds to lift slightly and reveal the countryside below the cliff.
Then it poured again.
The Duomo of Orvieto
And then there is the cathedral.
We have seen a lot of churches on this trip.
A lot.
At some point in Italy you start wondering whether you’ve reached your personal saturation point for marble façades, Renaissance paintings and gilded ceilings.
Then you walk into Piazza del Duomo in Orvieto.
Nope.
Still impressed.
The Duomo di Orvieto is spectacular.
Construction began in 1290, while work on the great Gothic façade was developed over the following decades and continued for generations.
Rather than one dominant material or technique, almost every available surface has been decorated.
There are enormous marble bas-reliefs.
Twisted columns.
Geometric mosaics.
Gold.
Coloured stone.
Sculpture.
Bronze.
And then more mosaics.
You could stand three feet from the façade for half an hour and still keep discovering details.
Which we basically did.
The huge sculpted panels around the portals tell biblical stories, beginning with Creation and eventually reaching the Last Judgment. The amount of carving is remarkable, particularly because the figures aren’t simply isolated scenes. Branches and vines weave upward through the panels, visually connecting generations of people and stories.
Above them, the façade becomes an explosion of colour.
The gold-background mosaics depict scenes largely connected with the life of the Virgin Mary. Many sections have been restored or replaced over the centuries, but the overall effect is still extraordinary.
And then there are the details that are easy to miss from twenty metres away.
The little geometric mosaic stars.
The green stone panels.
The bands of red, gold, white and blue tesserae.
The mosaic-covered twisted columns.
From across the piazza the cathedral is impressive.
Up close, it borders on absurd.
Someone apparently looked at Gothic architecture and decided it needed more jewellery.
Why Is Such a Huge Cathedral Here?
The cathedral is closely associated with one of medieval Catholicism’s most famous Eucharistic stories: the Miracle of Bolsena.
According to tradition, in 1263 a priest who had been struggling with doubts about the Real Presence was celebrating Mass in nearby Bolsena when the consecrated host began bleeding onto the corporal, the linen cloth used during Mass.
The cloth was brought to Pope Urban IV, who was staying in Orvieto.
The relic is preserved in the cathedral’s Chapel of the Corporal.
The miracle is often connected with the establishment of the Feast of Corpus Christi, although the precise relationship between the event and the cathedral’s construction is a little more complicated than the simplified version normally told to tourists.
Whatever the circumstances, medieval Orvieto clearly wasn’t interested in building something subtle.
The Perfect Weather for Orvieto
We obviously would have preferred not to spend portions of the afternoon being pressure-washed by the Italian sky.
But looking back at the pictures, I don’t think I would change the weather.
The storm clouds made the countryside look dramatic.
Mist hung against the hills.
Rain darkened the stone streets.
And the gold mosaics on the cathedral somehow looked even brighter against the almost-black sky behind them.
Orvieto is built around contrasts anyway.
Above ground, there is this ridiculously ornate cathedral covered in gold, marble and mosaics.
Below ground, there are dark caves hacked into volcanic rock with pickaxes.
Above are saints, angels and biblical scenes.
Below are wells, olive presses and pigeon houses.
One version of the city was designed to impress.
The other existed simply because people needed water, food, storage and somewhere to work.
And both have survived.
We originally came because we thought the underground tour sounded cool.
It was.
But Orvieto itself ended up being the surprise.
Even soaked.
Maybe especially soaked.
Sometimes the days that go exactly according to plan are the ones you forget first.
I don’t think we’re going to forget this one.
Justyn Perry
Justyn shares first-hand travel stories, honest recommendations and the practical details that make a journey easier to plan.
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