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Orvieto
Late afternoon rolled around and we found our hotel in Orvieto. Since there was only a few hours of daylight left, we did what we could to see the sights before dinner. We got a map and started climbing the hill to a big church up top… This is typical now.
In the middle of a wide piazza stands the Orvieto Cathedral. I’ve learned since our trip that this place had some serious ties to the papacy in the 13th century, which set it apart from most small towns we’ve been to. Pope Adrian IV, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Urban IV, Nicholas IV, and more spent significant time in the city. Nicholas IV actually laid the cornerstone for the Cathedral. Pretty sweet for the regular town-folk during that time; they probably suffered less than most in the late middle ages.
There is a giant well and an entire underground city cut below Orvieto. I’m sure the fact that Popes were running through here on the reg had a lot to do with that. Maybe it was made for their protection, for a hidden meeting place or for secret documents. I can only speculate though, because unfortunately time wasn’t on my side, and the underground city was closed. The well was nice.
Speaking of the ground, Orvieto rises up on a summit of volcanic tuff. Tuff is apparently tough, because they used it to fortify the city walls along and around the boundary cliffs, and decided it was safe to carve out stuff like wells and underground cities from it. After dinner we grabbed a bottle of wine and perched on a wall overlooking the city below. We all meant to relax and unwind, but I was the only one that couldn’t.
My fear of heights pretty much overcame my nerve endings, and I couldn’t open the damn bottle. I guess it had something to do with my legs dangling over the edge, and this ridiculous cycle of over-thinking in my head.
“alright, hold the bottle tight and rip out the cork, but don’t lean back because you might lose your balance backwards and try to compensate by leaning forward and either fall 75 ft to your death or get some spillage out the top on your nice shirt”.
I was off the wall after about a minute of irrationality, opening my bottle on a bench alone. When it was finally open I made one last attempt to scoot back up there, but the entire bottle shook when I brought it up for a sip, and that was all she wrote. Me and John hopped down and found a less terrifying place to drink, so I could finally chill out. The next day we would finally see ROME!
