Orvieto, Orvieto Underground, City Underground, Chapel of the Corporal

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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.

A City Underground - Still one more aspect of Orvieto which makes the city unique is the presence of a true labyrinth of cavities, galleries, shafts, wells, cisterns and quarries running along beneath the streets and houses. Almost 3000 years of history are documented in these man-made cavities, which brought water to the city from the source below the rock, preserved the water that came from the sky in enormous cisterns, as well as providing construction material for the houses on top of the rock, as well as jobs and working areas . Years of study by a group of speleologists has "brought to light" small fragments of Velzna, the Etruscan city, hidden in the dark bowels of the rock. Qualified guides are now available to take the visitor on a tour through a small part of this underground "city" (leaving daily from the Tourist Bureau - in Piazza Duomo - at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.), where the traces left by the ancient in habitants can still be seen and the faint echoes of the generations of Orvietani who worked here the streets still seem to fill the air.

Velzna - The first settlement to stand upon this crag that could be called a city, was Velzna, one of the most important centers of the Etruscan confederation, which managed to hold out against Rome until 264 B.C., when she was forced to surrender after a two-year's siege. What is left of Velzna? the remains of the Temple of Belvedere, near St. Patrick's well, the city of the dead - Crocefisso del Tufo - on the north side of the cliff where the tombs are laid out in city blocks, the sanctuary-necropolis of Cannicella on the south side, from which came the famous Venus of Cannicella, an archaic maeble figure of a nude woman (who seems originally to have been a male, a kouros). Many remains of Velzna are hidden underground and can be discovered in the subterranean labyrinththat runs along below the streetsof Orvieto. Archaeological investigation carried out by the Sovrintendenza alle Antichità, the Region of Umbria and the University of Perugia, continue to provide new information on these ancient inhabitants. We know, for instance, that the Etruscan inhabitants were relativelydemocratic, middle class, unlike Tarquinia where power rested with the nobility, and that they had built a powerful city up here on the rock.

Urbs Vetus - Old City. This was medieval Orvieto, a beehive of political and religious activity, where the whole populace helped build the glorious cathedral, financed by real estate taxes (the first cadaster or land survey records date to 1292) and legacies (which abounded in times of plague of which there where recurrents bouts through the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). The territory of Orvieto stretched from the Tiber to Monte Argentario and many of the fine palaces built then still bear witness to this past, including the town hall, the papal palace (many were the popes who set up their headquarters here for Orvieto seemed to them much safer than Rome), the Palazzo del Popolo for the military authority and assemblies, the Palazzo dei Sette for the seven rapresentatives of the guilds. Butit was also a town characterized by clashes between the Guelph (or Papal) factions and the Ghibellines who sided with the emperor. At the height of this feuding, 4000 lay dead after three days' fighting and three hundred 'enemy' houses had been razed to the ground.

A place of pilgrimage - The site of a miracle - well almost. The miracle itself took place in Bolsena, about fifteen kilometers distant, but the linen altar cloth involved is in Orvieto in the Chapel of the Corporal in the Cathedral. When a doubting priest, in 1264, said mass in Bolsena, drops of blood fell from the wafer as he broke it, and he promptly was convinced that Christ was present in flesh and blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Pope Urban IV was in Orvieto then and it was from here that he proclaimed the feast of Corpus Christi and had St. Thomas Aquinas write the services. Pilgrims often come to Orvieto to pray silently before this miraculous cloth which is also taken in procession through the streets on the day of Corpus Christi. The whole event is clearly depicted in the paintings on the right-hand wall of the Chapel of the Corporal. And to the left is the marvellous silver-gilt and enamel reliquary originally made to house the cloth in 1337 by Ugolino di Vieri, a Sienese goldsmith.

The procession of Corpus Christi - Even for those who have lived in Orvieto all their lives, the procession of Corpus Christi is something to be seen anew each year, or even to take part in. The historical portion with over 400 participants, which precedes the religious procession bearing the cloth of the miracle, makes one regret the relatively drab attire of modern man. Nowhere in Italy are the costumes of finer make: hand woven silks and velvets, hand stiched shoes in fine leather, wrought-iron helmets and halberds the magnificent cloak of one of the knights with a rampant lion in beaded roundels od clear Byzantine derivation, the banners of the various arts and crafts and quarters of the city - Olmo, S. Maria della Stella, Serancia, Corsica. The solemnity with which the figures slowly leave the cathedral and move through the streets makes you truly believe you are watching knights, pages, the Capitano del Popolo, the Podestà, the Signori sette, who have moved up through the time warp of centiries to once more parade devotedly in procession.

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