Orvieto

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A city, a wine, a cathedral, a well. A rock, a City Underground. A jevel to be saved, an example of how to restore a medieval town. A convetion center. It is this and more. Velzna. Urbs Vetus. Orvieto. Let's take them by one.

The most magnificent view of a city of Italy - It could well be that your first contact with the city was from state highway 71, coming from Viterbo where suddenly it breaks upon the view, rising majestic from the valley, a city that is a rock, a rock that is a city. Particularly if you happen to arrive when the mists still cling to the tuff and city rises up over the valley like an island in the midst of a sea of fog. Or in the late afternoon when the setting sun makes the gold mosaics on the cathedral facade flame forth, truly the "golden lily of cathedrals" as it has been called.

The craft tradition - Orvieto is so many other things as well. The crafts for instance. For some, Orvieto is synonymous with a certain style of medieval pottery. Many of the plates and pitchers now sold in the many craft shops which line the main streets - in particular Via del Duomo and the Corso - still echo the old medieval (and Etruscan) traditions. Once the clay was taken from the surrounding hills, that earth ideal for growing grapes, and olives, but so sticky your boots weigh a ton if you go for a walk in the country shortly after a rain. This tradition is still handed down from father to son (or daughter) and each potter personally reinterprets the tradition. Not all the potters orvietanis follow traditional styles. Some young people cross different roads experimenting new colors and new forms with results that fully reward their search. Lace can still be found in some of the shops but it is a tradition that is fast dying out, in part due to the costliness of works of this sort, made with a fine linen thread (once from Ireland which is why the lace is known as 'ireland') and the finest of crocheting hooks. Wrought iron is becoming hard to find although few craftsmen still practice this art. The last master smith, who made the wrought iron gates inside the Cathedral and one of the gates for Palazzo Soliano, died a few years ago. Woodworking however is still very much alive - in great part thanks to the impact made by the outstanding Michelangeli family, where wood has been a household word for five generations. They now famous in Europe and across the seas with the whimsical animals in 'virgin spruce' and one-of-a-kind dolls and the enormous wooden horses parked in the street in place of cars, all designed by Gualviero, after whom the street where they have their shop is now named.

Orvieto now - What characterizes the city now? A relative peace and quiet, the shipboard feeling of the cathedral square on sammer evenings when swallows dart low in groups and the wind rises and the cries of children ring out clear. Or the young people promenading along the Corso just before closing time and supper, a sort of itinerant parlor. A lack of parking space, particularly Thursday and Saturday morning when the market fills the Piazza del Popolo with its marvelous arrays of fruits and vegetables, much from Bolsena, cheeses from the surrounding countryside, and everything from silk trousers, to a new kitchen knife, to chickens, ducks and garlic. Cafe Montanucci is a must, with its fanciful decoration of wooden giraffes and houses, all by Michelangeli, and the wall along the edge of the cliff is ideal for a walk, leaving from Piazza San Giovanni (the restaurant Le Grotte del Funaro is a right there too - also in caves under the street where cord was once made), or the small lanes themselves, so quiet you can hear your footsteps echo behind you. Orvieto can be many things. It has been called a cradle, a harbor, a point of arrival. A second home for many.To on outsider it many seem one enormous museum, or a universe in miniature, a mirage that doesn't vanish. And to those who were born and raised in Orvieto it many truly be "the center of the universe", a sum of the hunderd small things of daily life: the odor of crushed tuff on the road after a rain, the overwhelming fregrance of linden trees in June, the people one knows you - or simly, as one man replid, "Orvieto? A hunk of tufa with lost of air around". Yet Orvieto can be many other things as well - a cage, apron strings never cut, a croos-section of society with all its problems and merits. But the final word is up to you, on whom the future of this city "high and strange" in part depends.

 

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