Orvieto, Italy

In which I spend a month in the city atop a cliff in the green heart of Italy, experience All Saints' and All Souls' Day, and get snubbed by local cats.

{Orvieto, Italy}

The rain has been relentless in Italy, and as a consequence, many trains at Santa Maria Novella station in Florence are running late. My train, however, has a different problem. An announcement scrolls across the arrivals board in Italian and I try to read it…I know that it says something about a “grande animale”, but I can’t figure out if the large animal is on the tracks or actually on board the train. It doesn’t really matter, because either way my train is canceled, and I have to catch a much later one to Orvieto than I had anticipated.

Orvieto is a hill town in Umbria, the green heart of Italy. Instead of sitting on the side of a gently sloping hill like its Tuscan hill town counterparts, Orvieto sits high atop an isolated rocky cliff - a cliff so high that it is necessary to take a funicular from the train station at the bottom to the old town at the top. It is dark and pouring rain by the time I finally arrive in Orvieto, and I can barely see anything as the shuttle bus carries me the five minutes from the funicular at one end of town towards my apartment at the other end.

I have come to Orvieto for a month. It is the very end of tourist season, and as day breaks on my first weekend in town the streets are packed with people. Orvieto is almost exactly halfway between Rome and Florence, and is a convenient day trip from either city. Buses stream up the cliff in the morning, deposit large groups of people in the Piazza del Duomo, and then take them back home at night. As much as I’d like to spend the day exploring the streets of Orvieto, I decide instead on this first weekend to escape to the Anello della Rupe, a path that works its way around the perimeter of the cliff. About three miles long, it involves a lot of up-and-down climbing, but it is not overly strenuous and the views of the valley are well worth the effort.

Not far from where I start the path is a little doorway, with tiny cut-out windows on either side. It is a chapel that was carved into the side of the cliff in the 16th century. Which seems like a long time ago, until you learn that there has been a settlement on the hill at Orvieto for about 2,500 years, since the Etruscan civilization settled here. The Etruscans dug a series of tunnels and wells in the cliff under Orvieto, to bring water to their village. Over the years, the town on the cliff grew, and space became a premium. More and more tunnels and caves were carved into the cliff, and business owners started moving their businesses underground. Today, there are over 1,200 caves and tunnels forming an entire labyrinth city underneath the ground at Orvieto. Many of the caves act as private cellars, and most are inaccessible to the public. But you can see signs of some of them while you are hiking the Anello della Rupe.

During the week Orvieto is a quiet town, with lots of curving narrow streets paved with dark grey cobblestones. Actually, I learn that technically they are not cobblestones, but granite setts - the difference being that setts are quarried and flat, while cobbles are rounded stones used as they are found. BUT, while I know this in my head, I still think of all streets laid with stones as cobblestone streets. It’s just easier.

The dark stones are slippery when it rains, which I don’t personally like but snails seem to love. Perfect little brown snails glide (ever so slowly) over the stones in the streets and piazzas. One morning my heart stops when I hear a crunch crossing the Piazza della Republica, and I am flooded with relief when I turn around and discover it is only a chestnut, escaped from the man roasting them on the stairs. It is chestnut season in Umbria, as well as olive-picking time. Signs in shop windows advertise new harvest olive oil, as well as chestnut and olive oil festivals in nearby towns.

The main street in Orvieto is the Corso Cavour. Running almost from one end of town to the other, it is lined with restaurants and shops, many of which sell pottery - both artisan and commercial. Everyone seems to know one another here, and it is not unusual to see shopkeepers and restaurant owners standing in their doorways, talking loudly to their neighbors and friends across the way (and often smoking) to help pass the time. Halloween arrives in Orvieto a few days after I do, and costumed young Orvietans crowd the Corso Cavour stopping to pick up treats from shopowners. Even the little grocery store around the corner from my apartment has an extra cashier on board just to hand out candy. The kids in Orvieto are lucky - Halloween is not generally celebrated in Italy like it is in the U.S., and it isn’t traditional for homeowners to open their doors to trick-or-treaters.

All Saints’ Day on November 1 and All Souls Day on November 2 are more important holidays here. All Saints’ Day - Festa di Ognissanti - is a national holiday and many businesses are closed. I buy bone-shaped Ossa dei Morti (Bones of the Dead) cookies from the bakery, and because my Italian is so bad I end up with a whole bag instead of the two or three that I ask for. That’s ok, they’re rich, cinnamony and not too sweet, and delicious dipped in coffee.

All Souls Day is not a public holiday, but a day for private remembrances and honoring the dead. It is a good day to visit the Duomo di Orvieto.

I mentioned at the start of this letter that tourists flock to Orvieto: this is what they come to see.

Orvieto’s cathedral - the Duomo di Orvieto - is a masterpiece of both medieval architecture and art. In a town of modest grey and pale-stoned buildings, it is a giant: a giant with a golden face. It is the golden mosaics depicting the life of the Virgin Mary covering the facade of the Gothic cathedral that draw visitors. But the interior holds treasures as well.

Two very special chapels bookend the apse of the Cathedral. On the right is the Chapel of Saint Brizio, decorated with frescos depicting the Last Judgement by Luca Signorelli. Signorelli was from nearby Cortona, and decorated the chapel at the turn of the 15th century. It is considered his masterpiece, and was met with universal acclaim. When Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Last Judgement for the Sistine Chapel, it is said that he came to Orvieto, to study Signorelli’s frescos before starting his own.

On the other side of the apse is the Chapel of the Corporal. The frescos here are quieter, not as famous, and tell stories that I don’t really understand - but I kind of like them better. It is in this chapel that the most holy relic of the Duomo is held - the Corporal of Bolsena.

If you spend much time in Orvieto, you eventually start to wonder why this modest town has such a grand cathedral. The Corporal of Bolsena is the answer. In 1263, in a nearby town called Bolsena, a doubting young priest was preparing for the Euchrist when the communion host began to bleed onto the piece of cloth (the corporal) upon which it was sitting. The incident was considered a miracle that proved the Catholic belief in transubstantiation, and Pope Urban IV ordered a magnificent cathedral built to house the corporal. He chose the high ground of Orvieto for the cathedral.

It is in this chapel that I sit on All Souls Day, thinking about friends and family that I have lost, and especially about my mother who passed away earlier this year.

As the weeks pass the air gets chillier and the crowds get sparser. One Saturday in early November, the fog fills the valley as I walk in the morning, and I start to wish I had packed a winter coat. Orange and gold leaves obscure the cobblestones, and persimmons and pink pomegranates hang over stone walls as I pass, waiting to be picked. Three of the town’s many stray cats sit huddled in a doorway and look over at me as I round a corner. When I get closer, one of them slinks away. It’s obvious they have something important to talk about, but they are not going to do it in front of me.

Even the Saturday market in the Palazza del Popolo is quiet - fewer vendors and hardly any people. I buy some potatoes, carrots and cavolo nero to make warming soup, and then decide to hop on a train.

Castiglione del Lago is a quick 40 minute train ride from Orvieto. I have passed it half a dozen times on the train since arriving, but haven’t had a chance to stop. The town is on Lake Trasimeno, and I am in the mood to see some water. The old town of Castiglione del Lago is about a half-hour walk from the train station, and as I make my way towards town the fog lifts and the sun begins to peek through the clouds. Several ancient rows of olive trees appear and lead me to the medieval Rocca del Leone, the castle that sits on the edge of the lake. The olive trees are hollow and have split into two or three trunks - and it occurs to me that they well may have been here since the castle was built.

Walking along the tree-lined gravel path that leads to the back of the castle and the lake, I am reminded of one of my favorite books, The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. In it, four Englishwomen escape the London fog and spend a month at a castle on the coast of Italy…

“All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay, the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in color were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colors of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty, and she there to see it. Such beauty, and she there to feel it. Her face was bathed in light.”

It is not April, and I am just visiting this castle and not living here, but it is enough to make me pause.

I stop taking pictures, sit on a bench and just look. Look at the blue water and green trees and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin.

Such beauty, and I am here to see it. Such beauty, and I am here to feel it.

I sit, and look, and feel very lucky indeed.