Visit to Orvieto: from Piazza Duomo to the Etruscan Necropolises

Perched on a large tuff cliff, which suddenly rises from the gentle lines of the surrounding countryside, Orvieto unfolds its heart in Piazza del Duomo, a suggestive space surrounded by ancient palaces and dominated by the 13th-century silhouette of the Cathedral, whose façade, wonderfully sculpted, shines with mosaics and polychrome marbles.

Inside are preserved pictorial masterpieces, such as “The Stories of the Antichrist“, “The Resurrection of the Flesh“, “The Damned and the Elect” and the “Last Judgment” (in the Brizio Chapel) by Luca Signorelli, and the Angels on the sails of the ceiling by Beato Angelico.

The beauty of Orvieto is amplified by the presence of two Etruscan necropolises, located at the base of the cliff (San Martino-Orvieto Scalo area) and by the underground part of the city, expanded during the Middle Ages and used for various purposes, eventually becoming a genuine cluster carved into the mountain.

What to see in Orvieto

1 The Cathedral

The Orvieto Cathedral is a true masterpiece of Gothic architecture and an Italian national monument. The church’s construction is attributed to Pope Nicholas IV. Work began in 1290 with the intention of uniting two already existing churches. Inside the Cathedral is kept the Corporal of the Bolsena Miracle, from which the feast of Corpus Christi originated. The façade was only completed at the end of the 16th century, with the construction of the lateral spires by Ippolito Scalza. The mosaics of the façade are of great significance but, due to numerous restorations, they have lost over time their original shapes and style.

2 St. Patrick’s Well

The St. Patrick’s Well is in a panoramic position at the center of Orvieto. It was built by order of Pope Clement VII, who took refuge in Orvieto during the sack of Rome in 1527. The project was entrusted to the Florentine Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Work was completed in 1537. Circular in section, it is sixty-two meters deep and thirteen meters wide. Around the shaft of the well spiral two spiral staircases, designed to run overlapping without communicating with each other. Each staircase has two hundred forty-eight very comfortable steps, easy to descend even for pack animals. At the bottom of the shaft, a small bridge connects the two staircases. The external part of the well, consisting of a wide and low cylindrical construction, is decorated with the Farnese lilies of Pope Paul III, who succeeded Clement VII. At the entrance, the plaque “quod natura munimento inviderat industria adiecit” (“what nature did not provide, industry supplied”) celebrates the power of human engineering able to remedy natural shortcomings such as the lack of water in the city.

Pope Clement VII never saw the work completed, which was finished by Simone Mosca in 1543, when Paul III was pontiff. Originally called the Rocca well, it was only in the 19th century that it took the proverbial name of St. Patrick, when the fortress lost its military function. The name of the well has no connection with local figures but refers to the Irish abyss where St. Patrick used to pray. During the construction of the well, numerous archaeological finds dating back to the Etruscan period were discovered.

3 Well of the Quarry (Pozzo della Cava)

The complex, with its entrance on Via della Cava, winds beneath the oldest quarter of Orvieto. Comprising nine basements, it is rich with Etruscan, medieval, and Renaissance findings, brought to light only recently after nearly four centuries of abandonment.

The deep well, from which the entire site takes its name, was excavated using a pre-existing Etruscan small well by Pope Clement VII, who, after taking refuge in Orvieto in 1527, ordered its construction to access spring water in case of siege. Its structure presents two combined parts: one circular in section, the other, smaller and dating back to the 5th-6th century BC, rectangular. Next to the well, the tour continues with a visit to an Etruscan cistern, some butti (wine jars), a medieval cellar, and remains of ancient rock-cut tombs. Also interesting are the rooms used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to produce ceramics. During the Christmas period, a suggestive nativity scene is created inside the well cavity; its setup changes every year but is always notable in artistic execution and historical setting.

4 Etruscan Necropolis “Crocifisso del Tufo”

The necropolis extends along the northern slope of the tuff cliff on which Orvieto, the Etruscan Velzna, stands. Discovered in the 19th century, it represents an extraordinary record of Etruscan history and culture. Its visit is essential in conjunction with that of the National Archaeological Museum and the Claudio Faina Museum of Orvieto, which preserve numerous artifacts, especially rich ceramic burial goods. The necropolis was used from the 8th to the 3rd century BC; its maximum development (6th-5th century BC) saw the planning of the necropolis into blocks, defined by orthogonal roads and occupied by “dice” type tombs, following a strict layout reflecting an egalitarian social organization. Each burial was reserved for individual families identified by the name inscribed on the architrave, revealing also the presence of foreign citizens in Orvieto, increasingly cosmopolitan. Displays of wealth by a wide social stratum are shown by luxurious grave goods, purchased on the Greco-Eastern market, many of which can now be seen at the National Archaeological Museum and the Claudio Faina Museum of Orvieto.

5 Torre del Moro

An experience not to be missed is the climb to the top of the Torre del Moro, where the gaze can roam freely beyond the city roofs over the marvelous countryside. The tower is located in the center of Orvieto, along the main street.

At the end of the 13th century, Orvieto acquired a new urban layout and strategically placed the Palazzo dei Sette with the tower called the Pope’s, 47 meters tall and oriented almost perfectly according to the four cardinal points. Its imposing size allowed visual domination of the then vast territory of the Orvieto state. In the 16th century, the tower was named after Raffaele di Sante, called il Moro, who also gave his name to the underlying Palazzo Gualtiero, his property, and the whole district. In 1865, at eighteen meters high, the distribution tank of the new aqueduct was installed in the Torre del Moro and, following the restorations of 1866, a mechanical clock and two civic bells were placed. The smaller bell came from the Sant’Andrea tower, and the larger from the Palazzo del Popolo.

The Palazzo dei Sette, with the Torre del Moro, recently restored and converted into a cultural center, belonged to the ancient Della Terza family, then was property of the Papacy, headquarters of the Sette, of the pontiff, and it is said that Antonio da Sangallo also lived there.

6 Palazzo Coelli

A stone’s throw from the Cathedral stands, in a strategic and privileged position, easily reachable, the elegant and monumental Palazzo Coelli, seat of the Orvieto Savings Bank Foundation. The building, which belonged over the centuries to illustrious Orvieto families, is the result of the successive aggregation of different volumes that today make a refined and versatile location where taste and comfort are inseparable. The ancient noble residence, completely renovated and expanded, is now also a qualified conference center suitable for organizing any kind of event: workshops, art exhibitions, meetings, conventions, and events of cultural and corporate interest.

7 Luigi Mancinelli Theatre

Orvieto’s theater, important both historically and artistically, is located in the town center, a few steps from the Cathedral and not far from the main square. The visit is recommended both for the beauty of the theater and for the rich theatrical and musical season. Theater activity in Orvieto is documented as early as the 16th century with the academy of the Giovani, also called the Confused, meeting in the upper hall of the Palazzo del Popolo. But dissatisfaction with a not very functional theater and ambition pushed some to find alternatives to the academy theater. In the 18th century, the Gualtiero family created a private theater in the villa of Corniolo, in Porano, now Villa Paolina. But for a real theater, it was necessary to wait until its inauguration in 1863. Designed by Giuseppe Santini, the Mancinelli theater opened in 1863. In the same year, Annibale Angelini was entrusted with decorating the interiors with grotesques, putti, and festoons, drawn from classical tradition. Giuliano Corsini handled the stucco decorations, while the Roman Cesare Fracassini took care of the figurative painting, including the curtain, finished in 1886. For the opening, the opera “Favorita and Mars” was staged along with the ballets “The Whites and the Blacks” and “Pedrilla.” The hall has the classic horseshoe shape of an Italian theater, with four tiers of boxes and a loggia. In 1921, it was dedicated to the Orvieto musician Luigi Mancinelli (1848-1921). Today it presents itself in its original form with a capacity of 560 seats. It has always had a central role in local culture, confirmed by the versatility of activities held inside: congresses, conferences, exhibitions, meetings with artists, as well as seminars on film art dissemination and study.

8 Orvieto Underground

The peculiar geological nature of the rock on which Orvieto stands allowed inhabitants over about 2,500 years to dig an incredible number of cavities that extend, overlap, and intersect beneath the modern urban fabric. These are a valuable reservoir of historical and archaeological information. From the central Piazza Duomo in Orvieto, opposite the Cathedral, at the Tourist Information Office, guided tours for “Orvieto Underground” depart daily at various times. The visit, lasting about an hour, takes place inside one of the most interesting and complex underground complexes of the city. Qualified personnel accompany visitors to discover the traces left by ancient inhabitants of Orvieto, in an easy and enjoyable route. Here, the play of light and shadow cutting the thousand-year darkness of the underground reveals deep and very narrow wells with which the Etruscans chased underground aquifers in search of water, large stone millstones, and long lines of tunnels.

Museums of Orvieto

9 National Archaeological Museum of Orvieto

It is set on the ground floor of the medieval Palazzo Martino IV, one of the three papal palaces behind Orvieto’s cathedral. It collects the oldest and most recent materials and constitutes, together with the Foundation Faina Museum — located on the opposite side of Piazza del Duomo — a synthesis of archeological knowledge about Orvieto. Linked to research and study activities of the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of Umbria and scientific-cultural institutions operating in the territory, the national museum displays the results of archaeological research and is therefore continuously evolving. Opened in 1982, the museum exhibits materials found in the territory until the 19th century previously kept in the archaeological section of the Opera del Duomo Museum. To this collection, consisting of several thousand objects, have been added the wall paintings from the Golini tombs of Porano, previously preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Florence, as well as a considerable collection of the oldest findings in the city (urban necropolises of Crocifisso del Tufo and Cannicella, the Belvedere and Via San Leonardo temples) and in the surrounding area (necropolis of Porano, Castellonchio, and nearby locations) organized topographically according to modern museographic criteria. Finds recovered by recent or still ongoing excavations are exhibited according to a rotation plan, allowing appreciation of ongoing research results.

10 Museum of Medieval and Renaissance Orvieto Majolica

The museum is housed in the premises of an ancient kiln. The permanent collection mainly consists of scraps from two kilns active on Via della Cava from the late 14th century to the mid-16th century; it is enriched with majolica pieces acquired at later times and related to the kilns themselves.

The collection includes many pieces and owes its uniqueness to the continuous production of Orvieto ceramicists. Until the mid-14th century, the city of Orvieto was considered a center for importing majolica and was therefore regarded as such.

Many Renaissance majolicas displayed in Italian and foreign museums and attributed to production centers such as Deruta, Faenza, Montelupo, Gubbio (to name a few), actually present iconographic references typical of the Orvieto area, such as noble or guild coats of arms. This alone should prove their origin from Orvieto workshops, but cultural stereotypes influenced or dictated by the antiques market prevented a serene attribution of provenance. Today, the concept is widely accepted that multiple producing centers offered the same product in the same period, highlighting primarily the excellences; it is undisputed that Orvieto production reached the highest levels in the 14th century, but is thought to have been surpassed in the 15th and 16th centuries by Faenza and Deruta. However, a careful examination of this collection’s ceramics, especially kiln scraps, shows that the quality remained very high.

The museum includes ten rooms, starting with the Conference Room, which in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was used for painting and firing ceramics. In the Cistern Room, you can still see the cistern from which water was drawn for ceramic production. Through a channel carved in the rock and a probable pipeline, water reached the turning points. In the Kiln Room, you can visit a nearly intact real kiln. This kiln is the only one from the 15th century still existing in the world. In the 14th-century Room, ceramics on display, mostly kiln scraps, are those always considered Orvieto productions. The Symbols Room showcases the most important pieces of the collection. The Truffette Room begins to show how some types of majolica were produced repetitively, almost serially, indicating that the kiln was more a factory than an artisan workshop. Along with jugs, there are globular containers called truffette. The Zaffere Room contains testimonies of all possible types of zaffere: from classic to diluted, including works called damascene and porcelain imitating oriental artifacts. The Bowls Room conserves numerous bowls and special majolicas. The Renaissance Room has mostly kiln artifacts which, although found in large numbers in Orvieto wells, were attributed to artisan workshops of other cities. Viterbo or upper Lazio, Deruta, Faenza, Tuscan types, or less probable origins like glazed graffiti of Ferrara or Veneto styles are visible. The Cups Room, with over four hundred cups, is the clearest testimony to the industrial character of the Via della Cava kiln’s production.

11 Opera del Duomo Museum (MODO)

Not just a single museum but a true system, that of the Opera del Duomo of Orvieto, centers on one of the most precious assets of mankind’s artistic heritage: the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, which houses inside the Cappella Nova or Chapel of San Brizio, the pictorial masterpiece by Luca Signorelli. Starting from the Cathedral’s core, visits through MODO’s venues wind along the thread of the city’s history and its Cathedral, retraced through precious artistic collections preserved by the Fabbriceria for more than eight centuries. The most ample collection is housed in the papal palaces adjacent to the cathedral, where works by Coppo di Marcovaldo, Arnolfo di Cambio, Simone Martini, Luca Signorelli, Niccolò Circignani are displayed. The first floor (Palazzo Soliano) hosts the collection of Emilio Greco (1913-1995), composed of plastic and graphic works made between 1947 and 1991.

In the 13th-century church of the Sant’Agostino convent, the second venue, the sculptural group of the Annunciation by Francesco Mochi is currently exhibited, placed in the center of the apse, as well as the series of Apostles and Saints created following models of various artists, including Giambologna and Ippolito Scalza, removed from the cathedral by the late 19th century.
The visit is completed by the San Brizio chapel inside the same Cathedral. Built by the mid-15th century, it is among the highest testimonies of Italian painting for the fresco cycle with the Last Judgment, which entirely decorates it, partially by Beato Angelico (1447-49) and partially by Luca Signorelli (1499-1504).

12 Emilio Greco Museum

Located on Orvieto’s Piazza del Duomo, to the right of the Cathedral and nearby, Palazzo Soliano is the largest and most imposing of Orvieto’s pontifical residences. It was built at the behest of Pope Boniface VIII Caetani (1294-1303).
Already the historic seat of the Opera del Duomo Museum, since September 2008 it has been at the center of the MODO exhibition route, representing its starting point, hosting on the ground floor Emilio Greco’s collection (1913-1995), donated by the artist to the city of Orvieto, with which he was linked both artistically and personally. Since 1970, the majestic medieval portals of the cathedral welcome the large bronze doors made by Greco between 1962 and 1964. With this extraordinary testimony of sacred art renewal of the second half of the 20th century starts the path towards the most famous icons of the Opera del Duomo collection in the Papal Palaces.
The works exhibited in the suggestive rooms of Palazzo Soliano range from 1947 to 1990 and mark the most significant milestones of the Sicilian artist’s career: from the Wrestler, exhibited in London during the 1948 Olympic Games, to the famous plaster cast of the Monument to Pope John XXIII made between 1965 and 1967.

13 Claudio Faina Museum and Civic Museum

The Claudio Faina Museum and the Civic Archaeological Museum are located in Palazzo Faina, in Orvieto’s Piazza del Duomo.
Built in the mid-19th century, the palace was constructed by reusing the structures of the Monaldeschi house, one of Orvieto’s most important families from the 13th century. The palace, purchased in the mid-19th century by Count Claudio Faina senior, became home to the family collection initially hosted in the Perugia residence. The building has been a museum since 1954, when the last heir Claudio junior bequeathed to the Municipality of Orvieto all properties to fund the “Foundation for the Claudio Faina Museum.”

The exhibition path aims to illustrate the stages of collection formation, from the original core formed around 1864 by Count Mauro according to the collecting trends of the time, to the collection enlarged by heir Eugenio who limited acquisitions to artifacts of the Orvieto area and promoted a civic museum rather than enriching the family collection.

From the gallery on the palace’s second floor, a special perspective of the Cathedral can be admired. From the entrance in Piazza Duomo, visitors access the Civic Archaeological Museum, arranged on the ground floor of the palace, entirely dedicated to artifacts from excavations in the city and the Orvieto territory, which testify to the exceptional flourishing of Volsinii, the Etruscan Orvieto. From the 5th century BC workshops of remarkable artistic quality, architectural terracottas from the Belvedere temple are exhibited. Directly inspired by classical Greek art, they formed the decorative and coating apparatus of sacred buildings. From the Cannicella sacred area, a sanctuary complex inside the necropolis south of the city, comes the famous statuette of Venus; from the Crocifisso del Tufo necropolis some stone tomb markers, usually bearing the deceased’s name, are exhibited. Materials collected from the Orvieto area during the 19th century are shown, including the Torre San Severo sarcophagus with scenes carved representing episodes mediated by Greek mythology, funerary in inspiration.

The Faina collection is arranged on the main floor and second floor of the palace in a renewed setting from 1996. On the main floor, which conserves 19th-century decoration, are placed artifacts recovered or purchased by the Fainas, with particular attention to Mauro’s collecting activity, especially for the numismatic coin collection, mostly Roman republican and imperial coins, exhibited in strict chronological order.

On the second floor finds are arranged by type and chronology: from pre-protostoric materials to Attic ceramics, while some rooms are entirely dedicated to Etruscan ceramics.

Other Places of Interest in Orvieto

14 Abbey of San Severo and Martyrdom

Interesting building that arose in the Early Middle Ages and was then rebuilt in the 12th century by the Benedictines. The Premonstratensian French order, which succeeded the Benedictines in 1220, expanded the Abbey towards the north in a Romanesque-Gothic transitional style.

15 Papal Palaces Complex

Papal residences built by Popes Urban IV and Martin IV. The first (1264) in Romanesque style transitioning to Gothic and the second (1284) inspired by French Gothic.

16 Former Church of Sant’Agostino in Orvieto

Former Church of St. Augustine with 14th-century richly decorated Gothic portal. 18th-century interior with side altars.