The golden cathedral on a volcanic cliff — Umbria's most dramatic hilltop town, sitting on 2,500 years of Etruscan tunnels
Orvieto is a medieval city in Umbria set dramatically atop a sheer tufa-rock cliff 325 metres above the surrounding valley — connected to the valley floor by a funicular. The Gothic Duomo (begun 1290) has one of the most elaborate façades in Italy, covered in golden mosaics and relief sculptures; its Chapel of San Brizio contains Luca Signorelli's apocalyptic fresco cycle that directly influenced Michelangelo's Last Judgement. The city sits above an extraordinary Etruscan underground city of wells, cisterns, and tunnels.
Orvieto (Etruscan: Velzna; Roman: Volsinii) was one of the major Etruscan city-states — razed by the Romans in 264 BCE and rebuilt as a Roman colony nearby. In the medieval period it became a Papal stronghold and the scene of key events: Pope Urban IV commissioned the Duomo in 1290 after the Miracle of Bolsena (a bleeding Host in 1263 that led to the institution of Corpus Christi). The Papal fortress of Rocca Albornoziana and the St. Patrick's Well (1527–1537, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger) were built by Clement VII who sheltered here after the 1527 Sack of Rome.