The two Orvieto faces
Orvieto town
Orvieto in the morning mist. Orvieto appears from a distance, in all its glory: a stone ship that emerges in the calm sea of morning mist. The view of the Duomo, glittering cathedral, is enhanced by the sunlight that illuminates the facade: a lace stone carvings and woven with golden mosaics. The church is a masterpiece of European Gothic.It was chased with patience by generations of artists, along three centuries of work, from 1290 to 1591. The large building to be admired for a long time from the square. But inside, hides other treasures: gold, enamel, marble statues and fine paintings, among them the “Last Judgement”, the great fresco by Luca Signorelli, dating back to the early 1500, which represents one of the most famous Italian painting. The imposing building overlooking the city and the intertwining of colorful houses, alleys, arches, towers and palaces, silent witnesses of almost thirty centuries of history.
The rose window of the Cathedral
The streets are books of stone that you can browse in small steps. Tell millennial events, from the fabulous and lost people of Umbria, the oldest in Italy, to the Etruscans who have left on Cliff extraordinary works of art. And then the Romans, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Modern Age. It needs to get lost among so much beauty. But for the tourist nothing it is as it first appears. Orvieto is a double city: on top of the Acropolis, the tangle of streets, shops and craft shops melts suddenly in front of the wide panorama of the valley of the Cliff. But in the streets, the curious traveler can discover another city, carved over the centuries by the peoples who have lived in this part of Italy. Hundreds of caves, silos, trenches, cellars, tunnels and stores run under the picturesque houses of the old town. A maze that you can take for the event, after consuming a cappuccino in a small and elegant patisserie. Via della Pace, there’s a story to tell. That of Adriano Di Mario, master of day and night confectionery archaeologist.
The well of St. Patrick
It all began in 1972, during the works to renovate the premises of the laboratory where still today they appear the sweet specialties Orvieto. A groundbreaking, opened the “door” of an equipment shaft, one of the many embedded in the layers of the tower tuff of Orvieto. Adriano, along with a mason friend, began to clean up the gut of stone. From the well before he came to a cave. Then to another. Then another. Decades of excavations Carthusians, day after day. Tons of earth removed and taken away by hand, with buckets and pulleys. The result, after four decades is amazing: the basement pastry is a maze of high tufa caves, spread over three levels. The lower reaches 18 meters below the road surface and touches the sandy bed of an ancient river: the walls protrude trunks of fossil trees of 240 thousand years ago. Along the steps, look crosses throw medieval cisterns built during the Renaissance, Etruscan travertine and small silos that were used to store the barley, wine and cheese. In the ups and downs, including the bas-reliefs and the charm of sculptures created in recent years, other paths branch off the forks of the maze: damp tunnels dug by hand by the Etruscans, as throbbing veins in the body of the fascinating old city.
You can explore”Orvieto underground” all year round, thanks to guided tours that start right from the square that is in front of the Duomo. The symbol of this other sunken city, is a unique construction: the St. Patrick’s Well. The work, high hydraulic engineering, was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in 1527, on behalf of Pope Clement VII, who had taken refuge in Orvieto to escape the troops of Charles V, then the head of an empire on which ” not the sun never set “. The emperor ordered his soldiers to put Rome on fire and the pontiff had been forced to flee. The famous pit, 62 meters deep and 13 wide, was used to ensure the water to the entire city in case of a siege. Visit it, even today, it is like entering a living picture of Escher. Two flights of stairs, illuminated by 72 windows, plunge into the ground, wrapped together like the double helix of DNA: some steps need to descent, the other to return to the surface. The well is also a symbolic journey into the darkness, toward the depths of the earth, in search of water, primal source of life. It was dug directly into the bare earth. Men and pack animals could get on and off, over and over, without hindrance, along the spiral stairs that have the distinction of never meet. The work cost him so great effort to give birth to a proverb. When you want to indicate an exhausting job, in Italy it is said: “And ‘how to dig the St. Patrick’s Well.”
Palazzo del Gusto cloister
To taste the famous wine of Orvieto there is need of any effort. The area is full of wineries and cellars. The hills that form the valley floor, at the foot of the cliff, produce a wine that was already known in antiquity. So much so that two thousand years ago, the people living around the Mediterranean, knew Orvieto with the fabulous name Oinarea, “the town where wine flows”. Special wines, famous all over the world even today. And ‘possible to know and appreciate the Enoteca Regionale of Umbria housed in the Palazzo del Gusto, in the heart of the historic center. In its cool cellars, dug out of tufa, rest bottles of all varieties produced in Umbria: the famous Orvieto white, red or musty, the wines of Torgiano, the Trasimeno dell’Amerino and Sagrantino di Montefalco, a red nectar, full-bodied, of great strength and strutturaAl Palazzo del Gusto is possible to live, if only for two days, an original experience: a course to learn the secrets of Umbrian cuisine. Exposed on the stalls, can be seen the local products: olive oil, truffles, mushrooms, cheese, handmade pasta, sweet macaroni, bread soup, cod roasted, boiled chickpeas, the pizzas Easter. And the sumptuous pork products, enriched by the “couples”, strips of pork fat flavored with peperoncinoImperdibile the “lava stones”, a spiral-shaped bread, topped with cheese, pepper, ham and bacon. The rich snack is concluded with a particular taste: the pear Monteleone, the “steak of the poor”, a fruit saved from extinction, the short conical. The farmers advise to eat it cooked, along with chestnuts or fire it like a cake, after having cut fettine.L’assaggio not forget. As Umbria. And as Orvieto, the city where the gastronomy is an art.
Federico Fioravanti
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