Orvieto

We visited this town many years ago when we were young marrieds. We remember eating a dinner in a restaurant and we were invited to look at the caves that had been carved out below. We stepped carefully down rickety wooden stairs and found some old men drinking wine under a bare light bulb. We tried the wine; it was delicious.

Memories like these last forever. Could today’s Orvieto be as pleasant as our memory of Orvieto?

Orvieto is as pleasant as we had remembered it.

Looking up to Orvieto

The funicolare

Our apartment is very comfortable. Sabrina lives across the street (though the street is about 10 feet wide and her door is only 30 feet from our door.) She has three families staying here in various rooms and apartments. We’ve had breakfast in her home twice this week. The first breakfast included scrambled eggs and bacon. Well, the bacon was actually a few strips of smoked pancetta, lightly fried. This was the best bacon we had ever had with scrambled eggs (which we rarely have at home.) A treat for sure.

Orvieto is an ancient city. In medieval times the city had stout defenses with cliffs that ring the city. The cliffs are 100 to 150 feet high and from the ramparts of the city one looks down on the tree tops below. It makes my stomach turn over to consider the drop from the ramparts to the streets below. 

The railroad station is at the bottom, of course. Immediately behind the railroad station is the funicular, a train car that is pulled by a cable up and then let down the slope that has been tunneled out between the valley below and the town above. There are two cars that pass each other in the middle as the cars exchange places every 15 minutes or so.

The town is very social. The streets are empty during the lunch hour (an “hour” that lasts from 1pm until 4pm.) But from 5pm on the streets are full of local people and tourists on parade, talking, shopping, and eating cones of gelato. It’s a pleasant atmosphere.

The Orvieto cathedral

The Orvieto Duomo, the town’s cathedral, is gorgeous. The facade is covered with mosaics that catch the sun and dazzle the eye. From the distance the Duomo dominates the cityscape.

We attended two Easter concerts in the Duomo. The second concert was the symphony orchestra from Florence conducted by Zubin Mehta performing pieces by Vivaldi and Beethoven. The concert closed with the Eroica, Beethoven’s 3rd symphony. The sound was muffled, of course, because the space was so large, but the setting was so impressive that it hardly mattered. And the concert was free.

Trumpet and organ concert

The first concert was very interesting. The first was a concert for organ and trumpet. In advance we expected some of the traditional pieces for this combination of instruments. What we expected was Corelli but that did not happen. Instead, the performers did pieces by Fasch (a German composer of the 1700s), Mahler, and Mussorgsky. The Mahler was the slow movement from his 5th symphony, a huge work, sad, touching, almost depressing. The Mussorgsky piece was his well known Pictures At An Exhibition, a piece written by him for piano, rearranged by Ravel (and many others) for orchestra, and,finally, rearranged for trumpet and organ.

The trumpet had the heavy lift with the Mussorgsky piece. The trumpet soloist played three different trumpets, a D trumpet (with and without a mute) and two C trumpets (again, with and without mutes.) The D trumpet was piercing. One of the C trumpets had a larger bell and a broader sound. There were six different kinds of trumpets that played against the organ and the music survived the transition from piano to orchestra (the version we’re most familiar with) and finally on to trumpet and organ. It was a stirring performance.

Rick Steve’s guide book says that you can “do” Orvieto in a half day. We must be very inefficient because we’ve just scratched the surface in the four full days that we’ve been here. The shopping is good and the restaurants are good, also, but more expensive than we accustomed to. The town itself is fascinating with twisting, narrow streets and wonderful views across the valleys below. We not done yet.

Orvieto is as attractive a town as we remembered.